Numerous online distribution for independent musician sites have been developing and promoting their flash (and some even HTML5) widgets for several years now. They’re all pretty awesome, with slick animation and graphic designs, but CDbaby has just won the widget war,… almost. Why? They’re the only major distributor of digital music that has a great widget with short clips, rather than the entire track. Having the entire track like all the competitors’ widgets was never a good idea for artists promoting their own music and depending on income from their own music. The reason it’s never been a good idea is because an entire streamed track, even at only 128kbps quality is high enough for countless internet users to download free mp3s from those widgets, with readily available software like IDM (instant download manager I believe) Thank you, CDbaby, for doing the right thing for artists. Not that the ridiculous level of file sharing will no longer exist once people legitimately buy an MP3, but hey, it’s nice to at least have a speed bump, which can, not too indirectly, contribute dollars to the content providing artists’ bottom line.
I have to include the word ‘almost’ here because Bandcamp, while not allowing shortened clips, at least has encoded for all possible browsers and devices with an HTML5 fall back in case of Apple mobile device viewing.
Steven Cravis is a composer and producer of ambient and solo piano soundtracks and has just installed his new CDbaby widget at http://www.facebook.com/stevencravismusic
Jam Playground 
I fully agree that there should at least be the option to not have a full length clip on these widgets. Too many sites out there trying to grab the full length song and give it away for free just so they can get traffic to a scam – spam – advertising site. The other thing though is most of these flash widgets don’t work well on the iphone (as of right now).
The last email campaign I sent, 40% of the opens were on an iphone. Until they go to html5, I can’t use em.