Is Facebook finally going to take on MySpace as a place for bands and music fans to hang out? We’ve heard various Facebook Music rumors before. The latest one comes from CO-ED Magazine.com (so you know it’s got to be true!).
According to CO-ED’s executive editor Stephen Gebhardt, who says he heard it from a group of marketing managers at a major music label, Facebook has been holding secret meetings with all the music labels and will announce Facebook Music next week at New York’s ad:tech conference (where it is also expected to announce its social ad network).
Here are the details Gebhardt was able to gather: Facebook Music will essentially be a way for musicians (or their labels) to create their own fan pages just like on MySpace, each with a separate sub-domain within Facebook. Facebook members will be able to join any artist’s network as a “fan.” This will be similar to joining a group, but centered around music. Members will be able to listen to streamed songs, watch videos, add music to their own pages, find out about upcoming tours, and meet other fans. Facebook is also supposedly working on sales widgets for these pages (to be introduced at a later date) so that artists can sell downloads directly through Facebook. (Watch out iTunes).
MySpace, Apple, Google . . . who will Facebook pick a fight with next?
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so, what does this mean for ilike?
most TC readers would not soil their eyes on myspace, but i am not thrilled with ilike’s short-clipped music selections.
additionally, most of the artists i love are not available on ilike. myspace offers an entirely different continent contingent when it comes to music browsing. i can find almost all the obscure artists i love on there, including literature and some swedish disco house.
back to typical scheduled program.
Myspace should consider joining OpenSocial
why the hell is that banner so big?
darn, we almost made it three days without a Facebook story. Oh well, there is always next week.
Though very will written post - short and sweet.
Do you mind if we can get a facebook-free feed like Engadget did with iPhone-free feeds?
I’m growing increasingly annoyed with facebook rumors articles that do not reveal any new information, outside of the realm of speculation.
You guys just don’t get it. We (college aged kids) only liked Facebook beacuse it was private and wasn’t cluttered. Facebook’s decision to keep adding all of these misc. widgets will cause them to use a large part of their user base.
It’s only a matter of time. We’re getting sick of all the clutter.
@3 Berlin…love it! Can you imagine. Very amusing.
facebook apps do degrade the core browsing experience, although entertain some. FB music, though, gives it the one thing myspace is good for, which i think makes it an inevitable feature.
@Mark
They want to gain market share , they have to go toe to toe with the aging giant. I doubt they will alienate there base.. I don’t know many collage kids that would be upset enough to abandon their network.
I think music It’s just a feature of modern social networks at this point.
Wow, that logo is horrible…
So Facebook is going to copy MySpace music, but with a widget. So what?
@7: I completely agree with you. I’m starting to see SPAM on Facebook. I’m in a group thats trying to raise money for a good cause, etc and there is a post on a wall that starts off with “The Hottest NEW Social Networking Website just launched.” It’s a Facebook competitor spamming on their network. I’ve even reported it a few times and it still hasn’t been taken down.
I’d say the appeal for many people with Facebook (well the early members) was that it was a niche product. Now users have to be careful of what material is on the website, who’s able to see it, etc. Now employers look on Facebook (like that’s the best representation of a person’s work ethic, etc). I completely agree that it’s becoming to widespread in other age groups for my liking.
However I glad somebody has tried to take on MySpace with their music section. It’s awful. You can’t browse for artists easily, every page looks different, lots of SPAM, etc, etc. I don’t even like iLike or Last FM. Hopefully someone will come up with a good application of todays popular music. I really like PureVolume (www.purevolume.com) but it doesn’t really have many mainstream artists besides in the Rock genre. I even tried to make some improvements by making a website called CDNoise (www.cdnoise.com) but haven’t updated it much since.
Great idea, but kind of wish it was from somebody else other than Facebook.
gruuve.com
gruvr.com
seriously —
myspace’s core business revolved arounds bands and live music.
they have fallen behind on the tech curve… they have by far the most data on live music but it’s damn hard for fans to discover, and very hard for bands to manage.
bands are frustrated with all the competition from overlapping web services out there. do you know how many times a band might have to re-post the same concert date once it’s scheduled? this is really a pain. yet bands can’t afford to not be on myspace.
The iLike app, IMHO, is mainly about their music-guessing game.
That’s what drives most of the traffic. The facility for live music on ilike is
cumbersome and it doesnt cover small bands.
facebook has a huge hurdle to climb to get bands to re-post the same artist profiles and manage one for facebook as well as their myspace… and it could be seen as a copycat move by users who are used to crawling through myspace for their live music info.
Does anyone have any idea how many bands are registered with profiles on myspace? As of 3 years ago, I think the count was around 700K.
If you go to music->shows and search with all options open, you see a count of like 4M bands! Even if half those are fake profiles, this is a huge number. It’s the “long tail” of live music. From what I know, about 75% of such bands are touring at any given time.
So maybe the real question is how facebook would REACH all those small bands - unless their access is limited to partnering with a major-label outfit like iLike
Facebook is too much of a walled garden to be attractive to a band trying to get the word out about their music since not everyone will be able to see their profile and listen to their music.
It just seems to me that Myspace’s 2x traffic and open profile pages make it better suited than what Facebook currently offers…
How are they going to handle DRM.. or is it that the music is going to be free for download.
http://www.meetingflex.com
Social Networking + Video -Crap
I can assure you most people using MySpace today did not come there for “band profiles”.
good to know that facebook providing to put in music
you can infact get inspiration from technology site http://lapnol.blogspot.com
Something is fishy about the constant number of blogs/articles written about FB. Very plugola-payola in it’s number and frequency. Or it’s proof that FB has the best P/R money can buy. Wait! I repeated myself.
ilike won’t like this. there can be only 1 #1 music app on facebook. who’s gonna be?
@Jaymon - Everyone will be able to see most bands profiles–since FB has opened itself up, its not so much of a walled garden anymore–unless bands choose it to be that way.
MySpace is the better option as of now…we’ll see if that changes. It will be interesting to see if FB Music is truly unique in any way or if it’s just a ripoff.
pandora.com has an ad on their site that says “coming soon - a pandora app so you can share music with your friends”
There is already something very similar to Facebook Music that is already in play which allows music artists to do everything that Facebook’s Music already entails such as listen to streamed songs, watch videos uploaded by members, add music to their own page, create a music station, find out about upcoming tours, meet other fans and sell songs directly from the artists’ profile, PLUS, sell their own merch directly from the artists’ profile via their own online store…What Escopolis.com has that the other big guys don’t have is the ability for fans to support their favorite music artist by sponsoring their favorite band which is a great way for bands / music artists to raise money just for being on a free website…Also, musicians have a form on their page for Escopolis to coordinate for fans to be able to interview their favorite band. There is a lot more to come but those are some of the features that are already available on http://www.escopolis.com
Is this feature availble now on FB? it would be good feature on FB. Honestly i never “taste” any social network yet on “poor” FS