Facebook’s new music feature
“Facebook, which has been toying with bringing music to the social network for at least a year, will also take its first step by integrating Lala into its popular gift store, according to a person briefed on the plans. Representatives of Facebook and Lala would not comment.
Currently, the Facebook gift store is stocked with images like birthday cakes and dogs (many illustrated by the former Apple interface designer Susan Kare, incidentally). People buy these images for a dollar — with 10-cent Facebook credits — and pass them on to their friends’ profile pages. It sounds frivolous, but its actually a big business, with the gift store widely estimated to have earned Facebook tens of millions of dollars in 2008.”
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/hot-on-heels-of-google-facebook-to-take-first-step-int-music/?ref=technology
In recent history, thanks to the internet, the ability to listen to more, and discover a wider array of unique musicians has become infinitely greater. Thanks to Panadora.com, an internet radio station that actually creates a playlist for you based on your musical taste, or lala.com a website that allows you to browse and listen to millions of artists. Now facebook.com, the largest social network on the web, is hopping on the band wagon. I hope that this feature, which will utilize the facebook.com store, will help people discover music that is new and interesting, as well as promote up and coming bands that deserve to be noticed.
Besides the obvious profit this new music feature would have for facebook.com I wonder whether web services like this, or Pandora.com or lala.com have a positive effect on the music industry. I like to hope that they due. They offer free, or at least cheap, and accessible methods of listening to music, unlike the current trend of pirating material. I believe these music features will spark peoples interest in musicians they would have otherwise been unaware of, and will ultimately persuade many people to purchase more mp3s legally, which is now exceptionally simple to do over the internet thanks to itunes and even amazon.com.
