Welcome to our new front in the long term, where we pit two Web services, applications or widgets against each other in a knockdown, drag-and-fight for the hearts and minds of readers Mashable. We had some heated confrontations here lately, from the not-even-out-yet next-gen iPhone beating out the Droid Incredible to Apple iBooks besting the Amazon Kindle.

This week is yet another mobile device in head to head, and this time we turn our attention to the music players. Again, Apple has had some mindshare dominance with the iPod / iPhone and iTunes ecosystem. However, Microsoft could be considered as having its own very strong competitor in the space with the Zune MP3 player HD. In combination with the Zune Pass service – a subscription offering that Apple has not so far, the Zune HD is some tasty hardware that makes a great portable all-you-can-eat buffet for music lovers.

So let’s put the Zune HD up against its arch-nemesis the iPod touch to see what Mashable drives is the best portable music player of the two.