Idolator

John Paczkowski at Good Morning Silicon Valley is reporting that Microsoft has submitted a patent application describing the music-sharing site Weedshare, a Windows Media-based site that uses a pyramid-ish structure to compensate people who share files that are eventually purchased. Paczkowski's compiled an exhaustive amount of evidence to point to Microsoft's likely adaptation of these features for the Zune, and he adds:

... there seems to be plenty of evidence to suggest that compensated sharing will be part of the core Zune product strategy and that it will likely be very similar to the system we see today in Weedshare, but perhaps a bit broader. Think super distribution. Think games. Software. Video.

We're sure that somewhere, in the bowels of Microsoft, people are hard at work trying to figure out how to apply this incentive-filled concept to the distribution of Zunes themselves.

Me? I'm between jobs until the Zune incentive program rolls out [Good Morning Silicon Valley, via Coolfer]
Earlier: Is Zune Banking On Multi-Level Music Marketing?