Of all of Apple’s failures, one of the tech company’s more disastrous was its move into social music sharing with Ping. Things got so bad that Lady Gaga, the social network’s face, publically called the results “underwhelming,” while Apple’s once-promising service didn’t even warrant a mention during WWDC earlier this month.
If anything, Ping highlights the inherent challenge of building a mass market social network around music, an industry that’s been more or less wrecked by the advent of MP3s and file sharing platforms. If users can download an album for free (and go largely unpunished), why would they go to an online service and listen to clips?
(SPECIAL: The All-TIME 100 Albums)
Take for instance MySpace, whose ascent to one of the world’s most trafficked sites was followed by one of the web’s more spectacular flameouts. The first mainstream social network, in trying to rebuild its identity, famously reinvented itself as a resource for bands and music fans – and look how well that turned out.
“Music is something that is naturally social,” says Steve Jang, CEO of Soundtracking, a music sharing and discovery app that was launched at this past year’s South by Southwest conference. “Back in the day, it was an analog experience, such as playing music in your living room, going to concerts with friends and hanging out at the local record store.”
The difference in today’s digital age, however, is that listening to music requires a certain degree of immersion. You have to be in a situation where you’re primed to actually listen (like at your work desk).
Photosharing platforms like Instagram are currently booming because your reaction to an image is instantaneous – you can more or less decide if you like a photo right away – but with music? It takes time, even if it’s only for a few seconds.
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Then on Sunday, word got out that Facebook was teaming up with U.K.-based music service Spotify, a free listening platform that boasts over 13 million tracks. The move demonstrates the social network’s aim to be the web’s central hub for user-everything—with instant messaging, famously addictive games and now, listening to music.
According to GigaOM, Facebook will integrate a new Music Dashboard into its interface. In addition to listening to songs, you’ll be able to recommend tracks to your friends, post top 10 lists and essentially do everything Ping aimed to do, but couldn’t because it failed to gain traction.
The team-up will address a lot of the issues that have riddled other social networks built around music. Licensing? Check. An interface people will know how to use? Double check. An endemic audience, thanks in no small part to Facebook’s 600 million users? Check, check and check.
Niche music listening services like Hype Machine and Soundcloud (and now the brilliant Turntable.fm) are able to succeed because they do something critical to any viable business: They know who their audience is while giving them the functionality to do what they want.
Facebook, on the other hand, sees their potential audience as everyone in the world.
Yes, sharing music is a social experience – there’s nothing more powerful than a friend’s recommendation – but it’s something few have been able to do well digitally, especially when the end-goal demands that the record labels get their cut.
Facebook teaming with Spotify could very well be the intuitive music service we’ve all been waiting for. Or, it could very well go the way of Apple’s Ping – loads of promise, before a quiet ushering towards retirement.