Facebook Readying New Music Download Service
Social Network Denies Report
According to a new report, Facebook may be getting ready to unveil its very own on-demand music download service. Given the social networking site's name power, it's possible such a venture could work – though bigger companies have recently failed to tread water in this very competitive market.
The report comes to us from technology blog Mashable, which says that Facebook will soon join with MOG, Rdio, and Spotify to unveil a Facebook music download platform. Mashable says such an unveiling is likely to be made at F8, Facebook's developer conference (to be held in September).
On the surface, it sounds like a solid idea: a recent study found that more than half of all Internet-using adults use at least some kind of a social networking site (be it Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, or something similar). With that many people visiting social networking sites every day (and trusting such sites with their personal details), it's not unlikely that these folks would be willing to do their music shopping in the same place.
In essence, despite a number of privacy squabbles in the recent and not-so-recent past, Facebook does come with some serious name-power. That's a good thing when attempting to start a new service of any kind.
However, for those who think this is a slam-dunk for Facebook, think again. Back in 2003 retail giant Wal-Mart unveiled its own music service to compete with Apple's extremely popular iTunes service and for a time even offered cheaper rates on songs (88 cents versus 99 cents). However, compatibility issues and a less-than-enthusiastic marketing campaign by Wal-Mart led to the service's steady decline, and a few months ago the retailer announced it would be leaving the online music market altogether.
So, if one of the world's most powerful retailers can't beat iTunes, will the world's most popular social networking site do any better? Who knows.
For its part, Facebook denies it's even considering such a service. "There's nothing new to announce," the company said in a recent statement. "Many of the most popular music services around the world are integrated with Facebook and we're constantly talking to our partners about ways to improve these integrations."
Spotify also says denies that it's involved with Facebook in the creation of a new music download service. "Regarding the Mashable story, I'm afraid we don't comment on rumour or speculation - and there has been a lot of that lately," a Spotify spokesperson said.
"We have a good relationship with Facebook in that we have an integration on Facebook Platform that has been valuable in terms of driving engagement with the Spotify service...We're continuously working to make the social experience on Spotify the best it can be and welcome relationships with any company looking to innovate by building more social value into the user experience."
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