In a rare move that doesn't include legal posturing, Sony has unveiled a new music player that bloggers can embed on their sites to show music videos from their stable of artists. The player, called MusicBox (wow), is Flash-based and therefore not easy for third-parties to copy the content from. The player will be ad-supported, with pre-roll video that shows before the music clip. More ad formats are likely to follow. Hewlett-Packard and Dreamworks are two of the initial sponsors of the player.

Now I'm all for companies opening up their content in a way that's easy for citizen media creators to put on their sites. And the inclusion of ads doesn't necessarily bother me. But imagine how popular this would be if Sony created its own affiliate network and let bloggers sign up to share in the ad revenue created by this. They could reap payments based on video plays, by possibly counting anytime someone watches more than 50 percent of the video. That would not only give people the means to share the content but also active incentives for them to do so.