

Facebook To Launch Music Service With Spotify - inmygarage
http://blogs.forbes.com/parmyolson/2011/05/25/facebook-to-launch-music-service-with-spotify/

======
melvinram
tl;dr;

"Facebook users will see a Spotify icon appear on the left side of their
newsfeed"

"Clicking on the Spotify icon will install the service on their desktop in the
background, and also allow users play from Spotify’s library of millions of
songs through Facebook."

"The service will include a function that lets Facebook users listen to music
simultaneously with their friends over the social network, one of the sources
said."

"...but it will only be available for Facebook users in countries where
Spotify has a presence, excluding the all-important United States."

"No money is changing hands with this partnership"

~~~
wccrawford
"...but it will only be available for Facebook users in countries where
Spotify has a presence, excluding the all-important United States."

So it's not really a 'launch' or a 'music service'. It's an integration.

Having said that, I think the 'listen to the same music as your friends' bit
is pretty interesting.

~~~
Hovertruck
You should check out <http://outloud.fm/>

~~~
Goosey
Thanks for bringing this to my attention! I have a thing I like to do with
friends called I call 'song sharing' in which we listen to the same song at
the same time and write what we are picturing from the music. Once the song is
over we all press enter and see what each other's visions were. It's a really
interesting way to get to know someone.

~~~
epscylonb
i can't tell if you are being serious or not...

~~~
lhnz
If that wasn't sarcasm then I don't know what is...

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sbt
This title is misleading - Facebook is not launching a music service. Spotify
already has a music service and it already integrates with Facebook in a nice
way, though perhaps some people will like to launch it from the FB website,
who knows. The simultaneous play feature is cute, but seems more like
something they added for publicity.

I'm expecting more headlines like this as Facebook heads towards IPO.

------
fabiandesimone
I'm in Spain and I have Spotify. I must be one the few that actually don't
like it.

I love music but I have no clue about artist names, bands, etc. This is why I
LOVE Pandora.

Just enter a familiar name, from the few that I know and I can spend hours
listening to good music.

Actually is so good is annoying, because I have to constantly upvote all the
songs.

I tried many many times to like Spotify, but Pandora wins by a long shot.

~~~
udp
Pandora is available in Spain? I was under the impression it was USA-only.

When I try to access it from here in the UK, the message reads:

 _We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can
no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S._

~~~
fabiandesimone
I use this service <http://unblock-us.com/>

~~~
upinsmoke
This is what I don't get. Music companies make it so different for music
services to operate internally, they want us to pay VPN companies to enjoy
music, rather than paying them.

------
mrspandex
"...it will only be available for Facebook users in countries where Spotify
has a presence, excluding the all-important United States."

I guess I assumed since Facebook is based in the US this meant that Spotify
would be available in the US too, but on second thought, I'm sure Facebook is
big everywhere.

~~~
bdhe
_...but on second thought, I'm sure Facebook is big everywhere._

According to this website ([http://www.nickburcher.com/2011/04/facebook-usage-
statistics...](http://www.nickburcher.com/2011/04/facebook-usage-
statistics-1st-april.html)) the US has 150 million, out of 600 million active
facebook users (according to wiki), which puts it at about 25% of facebook's
total share.

~~~
martinkallstrom
Which coincides with Europe, who also has 150 million Facebook users according
to the same wiki.

~~~
JCB_K
But the countries where Spotify is available only make up for 200 million
people, out of 730 in Europe.

------
schlichtm
Facebook is not partnering with Spotify in any way.

\- This "icon" on the left of the homepage is simply a bookmark, a feature
that any application on Facebook can choose to use.

\- Facebook is an open platform and has yet to choose a winner among third
parties for anything, and when they do they buy them and rebuild the product
in house.

\- Spotify does not work in the United States.

\- Spotify simply has deep Facebook integrations, tech writers are either
completely misunderstanding the information they stumbled upon OR they are
blatantly turning this into a bigger story in order to get page views and
attention.

------
jcasman
The announcement seems driven more by why Facebook would want (capturing
users, adding a revenue stream) than what users would want (sharing musically
cheaply and easily). Hard to see how this competes well with YouTube music
videos. Seems like everyone is looking to connect social networking and music.
MySpace has (kind of) held on because of the connection but there are many
failures including the supposed music heavyweight Apple's Ping.

~~~
JonnieCache
The real success here is Soundcloud. It's _venerated_ by fans of underground
electronic music, mainly due to its simple and effective social features.

It's very much like twitter for music in its social functionality. Once you've
hunted out the profiles of your favourite artists and labels, logging onto its
dashboard becomes a looked-forward-to treat, because you know that soundcloud
is where artists put their tunes _first,_ often before they're even finished.

It's basically taken over the _actual_ use case that made myspace successful
rather than the one they tried to monetise, which is a place for artists to
interact with each other and for fans to go and listen to a snapshot of their
current output. The difference is they have implemented it in a way that
doesn't make you want to alternately scream/cry when using it.

Their genius is in not trying to get the public to use it. The interface is
_entirely_ aimed at artists. If you sign up and you don't have any music to
upload, it says "zero tracks" under your name everywhere and you look like a
loser. If you don't have at least some experience with music in a non
listening capacity, then the whole interface is probably baffling.

This is a great move: it keeps out the general public who are never going to
pay for the premium accounts, and it allows Soundcloud to concentrate on
pushing the platform/api side of things, which is rightly what they are
focusing on for the future.

The real question is, why have I written all that blurb about soundcloud in a
thread about FB/spotify?

------
guynamedloren
_The service will include a function that lets Facebook users listen to music
simultaneously with their friends over the social network, one of the sources
said._

Why? Maybe this function will be an interesting experiment, but I just don't
see it working out. Honestly, does anybody really care if their friend is
listening to the same song (in a different geographic location)
simultaneously? Where's the value added? What does anybody gain from this?
Maybe social has a place in music, but this isn't it.

Edit: I'm not disputing the fact that bonding doesn't happen over music
(clearly it does, as anybody who has ever listened to a song with another
person would know), but I fail to see the purpose of _simultaneous_ listening
across the world.

~~~
ugh
There is not much detail there about how the feature will actually be
implemented but here are two scenarios:

You see that a friend with a similar taste in music to you listens to song you
don’t know so you click to listen in. That would be useful. This integration
also could allow your friends to play music for you. (“Hey, listen to this
cool song I discovered!”) I find myself sharing links to songs (mostly some
video on some video platform) all the time when chatting with friends, so
maybe this will be an easier way to do that.

Whether or not this is actually useful depends in my opinion mostly on the UI
and how easy to use it is. If it is more tedious than googling for the song
and listening to it that way it won’t work.

~~~
udp
Spotify already does all of this (with Facebook integration, too). The new
feature is supposed to be synchronisation (listening to a song at the same
time as your friend).

------
chrischen
Like.fm just released a "friend panel" that lets you chat and see what your
friends are listening to:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mbnhjlkenpmankjjbb...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mbnhjlkenpmankjjbbolibfcghileiae)

Except this works with whatever website you're already listening to music
from.

Also, the features they explained can all be achieved via a conventional
facebook canvas app. A spotify icon in the left side? Isn't that just the app
bookmark?

I think the title is probably just mega-linkbait. It's most likely Spotify
just adding more facebook integration.

------
BradGutting
It'd be nice if a music service came out that didn't revolve around
introducing you to new music or alerting you to what your friends are
listening to. Or one that realizes the music you might like could be based on
more than other bands you and/or your friends are already into (would any of
these services assume that a Metallica fan might also dig Katy Perry?).
There's a limit to how much stuff Facebook needs tacked onto it. And how many
"hubs" for media already exist? At what point does this start looking like
putting the VCR inside the TV set?

And not everything gets to become FarmVille.

~~~
invisible
How would you like it to base what you like on besides your past/current
interests (e.g. related artists to the ones you listen to)? Just curious.

------
Locke1689
I hope there will be a way to just use Spotify without using Facebook. It
seems like that could become obnoxious if I had to sign into Facebook every
time I wanted to listen to music.

~~~
udp
Well, you can do that already (with optional Facebook integration), so I
wouldn't have thought they'd take that away.

Especially since there are lots of existing paid accounts which aren't
connected to Facebook.

------
salsakran
so .... Spotify's launching a facebook app?

~~~
stephenhalter
... which will be automatically integrated with every Facebook account
belonging to users in available countries.

~~~
salsakran
except that the other example they give (Warner Bros) was just an app made by
them with no deep integration past using the api and credits.

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drstrangevibes
thats a helluva right hook for Google

~~~
nextparadigms
Google barely has any music service to begin with. This will be a big blow to
Apple actually (and Amazon to a lesser extent).

~~~
stephenhalter
Youtube, which has been profitable for a while now, is a huge social site for
music.

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ankimal
Spotify isnt available in the US. <http://www.spotify.com/int/why-not-
available/>

So, the facebook integration is an add-on for users that already use/can use
spotify?

