Microsoft has apologised after suggesting that fans of Amy Winehouse should honour her recent death by downloading a music track to their Zune music players.

A day or so after the 27 year-old singer was found dead, Microsoft UK's official Xbox Twitter channel posted a message saying: "Remember Amy Winehouse by downloading the ground-breaking Back to Black over at Zune." The post included a link to download the track.

Whether you liked her music or not, the death of almost anyone is a tragedy, particularly for one so young, and people are a bit sensitive about such an issue. The resultant storm of tweets started to trend on traffic graphs, and some hasty fire-fighting ensued.

"Apologies to everyone if our earlier Amy Winehouse ‘download' tweet seemed purely commercially motivated. Far from the case, we assure you," Microsoft tweeted within an hour of the original post.

However, the idea that Microsoft was motivated by something other than money didn't seem to fly with the Twittersphere, and the news started to spread even further.

"With Amy W's passing, the world has lost a huge talent. Our thoughts are with Amy's family and friends at this very sad time," was the final post from Microsoft on the subject, no doubt reassuring those who were concerned that the original message had been less than respectful.

Sneak reckons they should stop digging before they get to China.