Axehole

It’s Friday, and you know what that means. It’s time for the WTF music moment of the week.

This week, Microsoft’s Zune digital music player takes the WTF award, hands down. But it’s not just the Zune, which sounds fairly unsurprising, which makes us ask WTF? It’s Microsoft’s plan to buy its way into your pants.

The Zune is going to be a WiFi iPod clone paired with a Microsoft iTunes Music Store clone. Yeah, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

What makes it interesting is Microsoft’s intention to lose money on the Zune for up to five years to help persuade people to carry a Zune in their pocket instead of an iPod.

Microsoft has successfully used profits from Windows and Office to support years of losses with the XBox platform. Microsoft has so much money in the bank that it doesn’t matter how much money it has to lose on the XBox in order to be competitive.

This has let Microsoft to become a major player in the gaming market, even if it doesn’t make the company money.

Now Microsoft has decided that it’s willing to lose hundreds of millions of dollars to become a player in the digital music market. Who knows if the Zune will be a snoozer or not, but Microsoft is planning on using the profits of people’s addiction to Windows and Office to subsidize a new addiction - Zune.

According to Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices group, the company’s Zune product line will require an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars and will not pay off immediately.

“It’s important for us to have a play in the portable entertainment space,” Bach said.

Bach’s comments about Zune came as Microsoft sought to give analysts fair warning that it plans to invest heavily — but also to reassure them that it hopes the effort will eventually make money as well.

Bach said Zune is key to Microsoft’s overall entertainment ambitions and will capitalize on — and tie into — the company’s other entertainment offerings. These include the Xbox video game console, Microsoft’s television technology and the media-focused version of the Windows operating system that lets people do things like record and watch live television.