At their upcoming f8 conference, Facebook are rumoured to be launching a new music service for users, and it comes among a huge amount of movement in this space recently, first with Pandora trading last week, then Spotify raising funding which could see them finally launch in the U.S. and of course the huge hype around Turntable. Indeed, Facebook have been moving into the music space by association, with the likes of Spotify allowing users to connect with Facebook, to allow users to share tracks with friends on there. But according to Gigaom, they could be moving beyond this, with a full music service integrated within profiles. As laid out by Gigaom, the service will include a new Music tab in user profiles ; a Play button on the bottom of the screen to allow you to listen to tracks that friends are playing on different music platforms (through Facebook Connect) ; top tracks and recommended songs ; a live stream under ?Happening Now? that tells you live what songs your friends are playing. In addition to these rumoured services, what else can they bring to the marketplace?
Consolidate the market
Just as with any existing service, be it chat, location or photos, Facebook can come along and do it their way and completely blow the competition out of the water. Mainly because they have close to 700 million people to get in front of, but also because they/Mark Zuckerberg have a knack of finding that gap in the market and responding to consumer demand before we even know what we want ourselves. They can do for music what they did for gaming, only the stakes are even higher because music will appeal to pretty much every user on Facebook in some shape or form. Facebook?s biggest opportunity here is in syndicating the content that your friends are sharing across different platforms. Interestingly, there doesn?t seem to be one single music service that is winning out, in the same way that Twitter won out in microblogging, or Youtube won out in video. People seem loyal to their own service, whether this is Spotify, Grooveshark, Turntable, Pandora, iLike, SoundCloud, Hypemachine etc.. but Facebook can effectively work across these services to bring everything into one social platform. It is this syndication where their biggest opportunity lies, as they can unite music fans without directly offering music streaming themselves. Consolidating this market could be a significant play for Facebook
Music Store
The most natural tie in for Facebook?s music offering is with Facebook Credits. Though this essentially means taking on the the might of iTunes, Facebook have an opportunity to integrate a music store into the platform, that works with Facebook Credits. Think about the fact that you can buy Facebook Credit vouchers in certain stores, and the similarities with iTunes are even more apparent. This would also be a significant step in Facebook making credits a more universal method of payment, which they seem to have a clear interest in. This could be easily integrated with their planned services such as seeing which tracks your friends are playing, which could have a direct link through to their music store.
Share links instantly
There isn?t currently an easy way to share music links with your friends, with most people seeming to opt for sharing a link to a Youtube video or a track on Soundcloud. But just as they?ve added Questions to be posted to your wall, posting a link to a song directly in your wall would be a great addition. And this could well be a link to a song via Spotify, as rumours seem to abound that the two are moving closer together. The system itself would need to be worked out to be accessible to all users and not restricted to Spotify (which would currently cut out the U.S. market) but would be a valuable addition to profiles on Facebook.
Music tagging
Just as photo tagging has been a great way to connect friends in Facebook, there is a similar opportunity in music tagging. There?s often certain friends that you want to share tracks with, as opposed to all of your friends on Facebook. While you could choose to tag a friend in the post itself, with a link to your Youtube video, this isn?t a very clean process. Imagine if you could tag individual friends within a song, to share a track with them, or a group of friends that you want to share music with? The friend can then receive a notification and a link to a song. This is something that really only Facebook could offer as you have all your friends there, and this would be a great experience within Facebook, as opposed to connecting with Facebook via an external site to do this.
Friends? Music Libraries
Anyone that uses a music service regularly will know how difficult it is to find new music. Spotify etc.. are great for showing suggested artists, but these can often be quite hit and miss. There is a great opportunity for Facebook here to provide easy access to friend?s music libraries, whereby you can bring up a playlist of all the tracks your friends have shared across different platforms, or within Facebook. Again this is something that the other services can?t currently offer. While Spotify have integrated with Facebook, of course this is restricted to Spotify users themselves, and there?s still huge chunks of the market that can?t access it. Music libraries within Facebook would help ensure people spend even more time on the site, and of course each track can have a handy link through to their music store?
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