Microsoft Corp., trailing Apple Inc. badly in the market for portable music and video players, is introducing a new technology that will let users of its Zune portable devices legally share portions of their song libraries with other Zune users. The Redmond, Wash., company on Tuesday also plans to announce it has started selling downloads of television shows that will play on Zunes, including “South Park” and “Heroes,” through relationships with Comedy Central, NBC, MTV and other broadcasters. The company says it will have about 800 episodes available for purchase at $1.99 each on its Zune online store, compared with thousands of episodes from 600 different shows on Apple’s iTunes Store.

The music-sharing function for Zunes underscores how Microsoft is seeking to set itself apart from Apple, which dominates the portable-music and movie-player market. Microsoft has failed to take any meaningful share from Apple since it entered the business with Zune in late 2006. According to market-research firm NPD Group Inc., Apple had 71% of the U.S. portable-music-player market in the first quarter, compared with 4% for Microsoft. Microsoft has for some time allowed users to view the titles of the latest songs that friends are listening to and to hear clips through the Zune Web site. A new feature will allow users access their friends nine most recently played songs, as well as nine other songs flagged as favorites, and copy them onto their own Zunes. To play back the tracks, users will need a $14.99-a-month subscription to Microsoft’s Zune Pass service, which offers unlimited access to a library of millions of tracks.

Source: WSJ