Talk of Facebook launching a “music dashboard” has been going around the web since June of this year. Today, though, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the social network’s plan for music integration during the social network’s f8 developer conference in San Francisco earlier today. Facebook will be teaming up with music companies like Spotify, Turntable.fm, Vevo, MOG, iHeartRadio, Rhapsody and many others to give users a new way to share music.
The way this would work is that users connected to their music service account can automatically share the songs they’re listening to through Facebook’s new feed, the “Timeline”. Friends can click on the song via Facebook to stream it live with the person who shared it, which will then show up on their feed. Users will also be allowed to explicitly recommend songs to each other. In addition, Facebook will be launch a separate music timeline to better showcase what one is listening to the most and their favorite artists.
Zuckerberg had Spotify Founder/CEO Daniel Ek join Zuckerberg onstage during the unveiling to speak for a few moments. During his time onstage, Ek said the following about Spotify’s efforts to spread music:
“We had to draw people away from piracy while helping them listen to more music. The problem with Napster was that it didn’t work for the music industry. We spent the last decade building a product that benefits the artists while allowing people to share music.”
iHeartRadio CTO Brett Taylor was also on hand for the announcement and said the following:
“This is a different type of radio service. It’ s a social radio experience, and by saying that right up front, they’re setting up a completely different expectation.”
It’s a bit too soon to say that this will make a huge impact in music. However, Facebook is still the most popular social network being used (with Google+ is certainly trying to catch up), so it is safe to say that their music integration will cause a major bump for the services involved. If any of the companies will benefit the most, though, it’s Spotify. The European music company has been making a big impression in the U.S. since debuting in the Summer, and have just reached $2 million paying subscribers (unclear if this is worldwide or in certain continents). This partnership with Facebook has come at a good time as Spotify still has a lot of buzz surrounding it (even though some labels aren’t too pleased with the payout rates).
In case Facebook’s music integration still seems a little confusing to you, Spotify posted a video explaining how to use the new music sharing tool, which can be seen after the jump.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjAr5nGzjV8[/youtube]
[via Digital Music News, GigaOM, and RAMP]
