Rumor has it that Zune will encourage song sharing with revenue share to the “user song promoter” who sends a song to friends to listen to free and then gets some money if they buy it. MS certainly would be wise to cut the users in on the profits.
As I recently noted it’s surprising how users still don’t demand more of a piece of the action, though not surprising how Google, YouTube, Myspace, Yahoo, MSN, and other user content collection points, the key beneficiaries of this arrangement, have not done much to innovate in that direction.
Good for MS to break that ice. Users, collectively, hold all the *future* revenue streams in their wallets. Therefore they could hold most of the power. It’s about time they used it.
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Joe Duck 
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I totally agree. I am a founder of Amie Street, http://www.amiestreet.com and incentivizing users to share and recommend songs is a core element of our business model. On Amie Street, all songs start free and rise in price the more they are purchased, with a cap at 98 cents. Members who buy and recommend a song that subsequently rises in price are rewarded with credit to buy more music. I’m flattered that Microsoft thought it such a good idea.
Hey Josh – sorry to imply it was Microsoft’s idea when in fact I bet a lot of companies are using variations on this powerful theme. I like ads and feed my kids with ad money, but recognize that the ultimate “cutting out the middleman” would be a world where you didn’t need ads at all. Perfect search would combine with recommendations like at your site and people would always have that info-rich environment and not need ads much if at all.