Apple’s Rock and Roll event is in full swing, and they’ve just announced that you’ll be able to share albums you’re interested in over Facebook and Twitter. This isn’t exactly a unique feature — we’ve seen music sites like Lala and plenty of others tap into Facebook Connect and Twitter for some time. But this is Apple, which has been notoriously slow moving when it comes to integrating parters into their own applications. And, of course, iTunes is now the biggest music retailer in the world, with over 100 million accounts and 8.5 billion songs downloaded, which means that even if a small fraction of iTunes users take advantage of the new sharing functionality, that will still represent a lot of sharing.
Note that this version of iTunes apparently does not have the social playlist features that had been rumored in the weeks leading up to today’s event.
Update: iTunes 9 is now live for download and we’ve just tried out the new sharing functionality for ourselves. In short, it’s quite basic at this point. On Twitter a shared item includes the song title, artist, an #iTunes hashtag, and a link to the iTunes store (no surprise there). But even Facebook’s shared item is pretty basic — unlike what you see when you share a song through Lala or similar apps, which let you stream song excerpts or the entire song from an embedded player, with iTunes your friends will only see a song’s album cover. If they want to hear it, they’ll have to fire up iTunes.
Also note that there’s apparently no way to share a song directly from your iTunes Library — you’ll have to load the iTunes Music Store and share a song from there if you want to publish it to Facebook or Twitter.
Image via GDGT
So will this work only from iTunes on the desktop, or can I use this feature to share music I’m listening to on my iPhone (functionality available in the app “Mobile Music Messenger” which lets you tweet or updates your Facebook status with what you’re currently listening to on iPhone)?
Guess I’ll find out in a few minutes for myself now that 3.1 is finally downloading…
Oh, and MMM is available at http://mobilemu...icmessenger.com (disclosure: I’m an advisor to developer SF App Studio).
I am not that crazy about this sharing feature. I am looking for something better.
This was an inevitable development and should have been introduced a while ago as it’s become standard across many services now!
Nice feature. Even Apple disappoints many, this integration with Twitter and Facebook is appreciable. But cleverly it makes a check point to load the iTunes Music Store and share a song from there if you want to publish it to Facebook or Twitter. Good Business.
so when does new iTunes version roll out?
This is a great step from iTunes. Now we’ll know who’s listening to what in real time. That’s fantastic. Till now, I’ve been using http://music.boilingpage.com to find the hottest songs that people are listening to in real time. Now, I can use iTunes to do the same. I would love to see http://music.boilingpage.com integrated with iTunes. That’ll be phenomenal.
self promote much?
Wow Thing..Apple is now believing in sharing..
who is going to be the first to say that it is apple way of following windows-7 INNOVATIONS?
nobody, I guess!
App Exposé and iTunes Home Sharing both are Microsoft’s ideas!
Looks like they finally really focused on the design of iTunes this go around.
Did you get this information from Yoko or the Star?
Shouldn’t tweet-er get a commission then if the song is purchased?
Tweeting an Audioscrobbler feed serves my needs just as well, and I don’t have to deal with the iTunes monster.
If you share it on Twitter, the hash tag #iTunes is added. Wonder if that’ll stay in the trending topics 23/7 if enough people use the feature?
These sharing features are decent but they need to allow sharing from the iTunes library.
I don’t want to share a song the moment I buy it. In this case it would be prior to buying it. It’s after a few listens that I would want to share it.
Does this work with sharing podcasts?
Too ittle and too late: am underwhelmed.
And iTunes is still the worst piece of bloatware in history.
Damn, no Last.fm integration…
Damn, no Pandora integration… (more useful than facebook or twitter)
sounds pretty lame-o
j aime beaucup ce qui se fait ces dernirs temps sur facebook et j aime participer a votre effort par mes moyens modestes ,car j ai des limites comme la langue ,je parle pas anglais et je ne suis pas trés doue en informatique. cordialement jamal hachcham
what in the crap makes you think people can read that?
certainly the audience #’s are impressive, but if you want to see the future of social music sharing, check out Friend Radio:
http://friendradio.fm/
[disclosure: yes, i'm an investor via fbFund, but regardless it's pretty cool shit]
So if I make a mix..I won’t be able to share it cuz it is in my library..that is gonna suck…but maybe there is a work around???
This is lame.
-Only very basic sharing.
-Only works for stuff in the iTunes store.
-You have to do it manually – there’s no “one-click sharing.”
-And of course you have to go all the way into the iTunes store and find the song you want to share.
rondévou le???au
rinebie_jione@rocketmail.com
merci
sarong he
It’d be great if you could upload it form your itunes music library.