Facebook To Launch Music Service With Spotify • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook To Launch Music Service With Spotify

#11

Post by Hovertruck » Wed, May 25, 2011, 5:58 PM UTC

wccrawford wrote: post #5

melvinram wrote: post #2

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 so…

"...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.

You should check out http://outloud.fm/

Re: Facebook To Launch Music Service With Spotify

#12

Post by jcasman » Wed, May 25, 2011, 6:00 PM UTC

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.

Re: Facebook To Launch Music Service With Spotify

#13

Post by salsakran » Wed, May 25, 2011, 6:03 PM UTC

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

Re: Facebook To Launch Music Service With Spotify

#14

Post by sbt » Wed, May 25, 2011, 6:05 PM UTC

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.

Re: Facebook To Launch Music Service With Spotify

#15

Post by bdhe » Wed, May 25, 2011, 6:08 PM UTC

mrspandex wrote: post #3

"...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.

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

According to this website (http://www.nickburcher.com/2011/04/facebook-usage-statistics...) 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.

Re: Facebook To Launch Music Service With Spotify

#16

Post by nextparadigms » Wed, May 25, 2011, 6:10 PM UTC

drstrangevibes wrote: post #9

thats a helluva right hook for Google

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

Re: Facebook To Launch Music Service With Spotify

#17

Post by yid » Wed, May 25, 2011, 6:13 PM UTC

peterb wrote: post #8

guynamedloren wrote: post #4

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? Wha…

I think this is interesting from a DJ or live mix-tape perspective. I have several friends who's taste in music I like. I would love it if they set aside an hour of "dj'ing" live. It is also interesting during a "chat" session.

Why not set up a Shoutcast server and stream through any respectable audio player?

A quick Goog brings up:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHOUTcast http://www.serverroom.us/shoutcast

Re: Facebook To Launch Music Service With Spotify

#18

Post by JonnieCache » Wed, May 25, 2011, 6:15 PM UTC

jcasman wrote: post #12

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 he…

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?

Re: Facebook To Launch Music Service With Spotify

#19

Post by ankimal » Wed, May 25, 2011, 6:18 PM UTC

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?

Re: Facebook To Launch Music Service With Spotify

#20

Post by ugh » Wed, May 25, 2011, 6:22 PM UTC

guynamedloren wrote: post #4

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? Wha…

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.