Rebecca Lieb, an analyst with Altimeter Group, saw the move as an effort to develop more revenue streams. BitTorrent already features display advertising, but the program announced Tuesday would lead it additionally into content promotion, Lieb said. It's likely BitTorrent will charge artists and their marketers to feature their content in addition to sharing the resulting ad revenue, she said.

"The music business is a tough business. People will do a lot to gain visibility. It's not easy to be widely visible in iTunes, just as it wasn't easy to get a floor display in Tower Records 20 years ago if you were an unknown," she said.

BitTorrent's initiative, she said, "is a really interesting model to disrupt digital music and media distribution methods."

But is the move an effort by BitTorrent to distance itself from the unsavory world of file-sharing, which has been in the public eye during the ongoing ?

"Public relations and image and reputation could be part of it, but I also think BitTorrent is looking to monetize an extremely popular application and treat it as media," she said.