Facebook artist platform to include iTunes tie-ins

[AppleInsider]

Facebook is reportedly working on an artist platform for musicians to be launched later this year that will rival similar offerings from MySpace and include tie-ins with Apple's iTunes Store.

According to the report by PaidContent, the social networking site, which caters to over 34 million registered members, is designing the platform to allow bands and labels to create artists pages, and allow various widgets to be embedded for music promotion, organizing events, and more.

"Among those widgets would be iLike, the most popular app inside Facebook, but will also include iTunes widgets for sampling (to begin with), and eventually buying music through Apple," the report states. "The service will still have the utilitarian sensibilities of the Facebook platform, the sources stress, rather than the more chaotic and flashy platform that MySpace has."

Facebook has reportedly been making the rounds of music labels trying to get this service off the ground, but will also have "an actual deal with Apple" as part of the music platform initiative.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[wirc]

Well my Apple stock is doing well.

When is Facebook's IPO??

[SpamSandwich]

Don't know, but they are the "it" girl right now, aren't they?

I still can't understand why anyone would want to post all of their personal information online, but hey, you can't knock success.

[mgkwho]

"to begin with"

-=|Mgkwho

[quinney]

Originally Posted by SpamSandwich

I still can't understand why anyone would want to post all of their personal information online, but hey, you can't knock success.

Because narcissism is a virtue in US culture

People will try to make money off it, revealing (as if it was concealed)
another attribute of our national psyche.

[Digital Disasta]

I dont think the Facebook artist pages are going to rival myspace at all. Myspace has such a huge foundation right now, it's kind of ridiculous to try and fight it at this point. I am on both, I check myspace everyday, where as I check facebook maybe once a week. The general public does the same I feel. Myspace just had a better concept from the beginning and others are just trying to copy it. I will admit, some of the coding for myspace could be a lot better, but at the end of the day, they fix the problems and add new ones. I can't see facebook doing so well.

[Clive At Five]

Originally Posted by Digital Disasta

I dont think the Facebook artist pages are going to rival myspace at all. Myspace has such a huge foundation right now, it's kind of ridiculous to try and fight it at this point. I am on both, I check myspace everyday, where as I check facebook maybe once a week. The general public does the same I feel. Myspace just had a better concept from the beginning and others are just trying to copy it. I will admit, some of the coding for myspace could be a lot better, but at the end of the day, they fix the problems and add new ones. I can't see facebook doing so well.

Wow, I whole heartedly disagree. I, too, have both, but I check Facebook daily and MySpace once a month... maybe. Facebook's programming is waaaaaaaaay better. The pages are clean and don't allow for user-made disasters like what is all too common on MySpace. Plus they currently forbid audio on their user-pages, which is very much for the better. Who wants to involuntarily listen to someone else's music when they navigate to a page. REALLY annoying, especially when you're already listening to iTunes or watching TV or whatever. I'm confident that Facebook will, from the start, allow users to block involuntary listening-to of music... something that MySpace does not allow. Then there's the part about Tom Anderson being a stooge of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (Fox) which makes their money almost exclusively through advertising. Meanwhile, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is only in it for his own financial gain and not a corporation. Lastly, MySpace is generally shadier and sluttier while Facebook is cleaner and more wholesome.

I feel that Facebook will overcome MySpace in popularity in the near future due, simply, to better design.

In other words, Facebook is to Apple as MySpace is to PeeCee

-Clive

[rebelprince]

Just to stem off further "why do people use social networks??11?!" comments, here's Danah Boyd's article on why they are important parts of identity construction for modern teenagers: PDF Link Danah is one of the few people who have spent a lot of time researching this. If you don't understand social networks, read it, then come back to the conversation. She's also got an article on Facebook vs. MySpace and class divisions, which makes some good points, though I question some of her conclusions there.

I'm 26, upper middle class, in grad school, and 90% of my friends, colleagues, and professors use Facebook and/or MySpace every day. There has been a big shift toward Facebook amongst my more educated and well-to-do friends in the past year, but that may be skewed because of my department. Facebook seems to be doing a good job of walking the line between the pure utility of LinkedIn and the crazy fun chaos of MySpace.

[addabox]

Originally Posted by Clive at Five

Lastly, MySpace is generally shadier and sluttier while Facebook is cleaner and more wholesome.

I would have thought that would be to MySpace's advantage, at least given its current demographic.

Imagine what a disaster it would be for Facebook if parents started encouraging their kids to use it instead of MySpace, because Facebook was "more wholesome".

[wirc]

I was joking about Facebook's IPO, which will probably never happen. Irrespective of its privacy problems, it is a juggernaut that will dominate its competition for some time to come, including myspace. Myspace was originally designed for musicians, and is meant as a scene networking site. Facebook, on the other hand is both a method of self-expression, networking, very practical planning, and also as a way a different way to be friends.

Much is made over its data-mining and use as a procrastination technique, but outsiders forget how useful it can actually be. A few thoughts:

1 Facebook has allowed social groups to jump many awkward stages of relationships, by getting a lot of the discovery out of the way. At my university, around half of the incoming freshmen already had been communicating through facebook with their floormates, making many of the usual ways of introduction irrelevant.

2 Facebook is a major tool of self-expression and development. An guest opinion in the New York Times describes the site as theater, a parallel one to the one that is happening everywhere groups of people are found. People are trying to define themselves in a crowd, and moreover, finding that right definition for themselves. Remember that most of the users of social networking sites are young, and often change in myriad ways. It's almost a sounding board of new interests and thoughts that allow someone to fiddle with their beliefs. The design of facebook's pages restricts many ways of expression, but it makes the actual expression more pronounced, as certain types can be judged and transgression of those categories become big statements.

3 In comparison to myspace, many girls I know feel much more comfortable in Facebook, which has vastly superior security controls and consequently is much more popular for sharing information. So when skeezy old men aren't posting on your wall every hour, you're pretty appreciative of the exclusivity.

4 The most significant aspect people, especially critics are not grasping is that social networking is a whole new kind of interaction on the same order of magnitude as the internet. These are a different kind of relationships, ones that augment other kinds of friendships, or exist separately.

Consider whether you are really friends with your boss, mother, spouse, cousin, or significant other. You may have deep and caring relationship with those types of people and yet still not be "friends" with them in the same way you have relationships with friends. Or, consider how you think of me here. We discuss things together, we make jokes, we tease, and so on - but I'm not your friend. If I were to be friends with you and also discuss on these boards, then it's just a way to further our friendship. Most people, after a few years of use, either recognize that it is different and start to act differently, or simply reduce facebook to a basic tool.

5 As to complaints about vanity, is it vanity to tell your friends what kind of movies you like, or what parties you are going to? Perhaps if you're going to have a method of interrelation between people that involves writing things down and is accessible all the time, you're gonna have to put something down that's more than what comes out in one conversation. Plus, a lot of people see all the empty boxes in the edit section and fill them out because they might as well - most people just think they have nothing to hide, and so put whatever they feel like. Chalk it up to naïveté or whatever, it's not vanity - its just procedure.

Now, if someone is checking his or her profile every hour and changing things, then that's probably vanity.

[addabox]

Originally Posted by wirc

I was joking about Facebook's IPO, which will probably never happen. Irrespective of its privacy problems, it is a juggernaut that will dominate its competition for some time to come, including myspace. Myspace was originally designed for musicians, and is meant as a scene networking site. Facebook, on the other hand is both a method of self-expression, networking, very practical planning, and also as a way a different way to be friends.

Much is made over its data-mining and use as a procrastination technique, but outsiders forget how useful it can actually be. A few thoughts:

1 Facebook has allowed social groups to jump many awkward stages of relationships, by getting a lot of the discovery out of the way. At my university, around half of the incoming freshmen already had been communicating through facebook with their floormates, making many of the usual ways of introduction irrelevant.

2 Facebook is a major tool of self-expression and development. An guest opinion in the New York Times describes the site as theater, a parallel one to the one that is happening everywhere groups of people are found. People are trying to define themselves in a crowd, and moreover, finding that right definition for themselves. Remember that most of the users of social networking sites are young, and often change in myriad ways. It's almost a sounding board of new interests and thoughts that allow someone to fiddle with their beliefs. The design of facebook's pages restricts many ways of expression, but it makes the actual expression more pronounced, as certain types can be judged and transgression of those categories become big statements.

3 In comparison to myspace, many girls I know feel much more comfortable in Facebook, which has vastly superior security controls and consequently is much more popular for sharing information. So when skeezy old men aren't posting on your wall every hour, you're pretty appreciative of the exclusivity.

4 The most significant aspect people, especially critics are not grasping is that social networking is a whole new kind of interaction on the same order of magnitude as the internet. These are a different kind of relationships, ones that augment other kinds of friendships, or exist separately.

Consider whether you are really friends with your boss, mother, spouse, cousin, or significant other. You may have deep and caring relationship with those types of people and yet still not be "friends" with them in the same way you have relationships with friends. Or, consider how you think of me here. We discuss things together, we make jokes, we tease, and so on - but I'm not your friend. If I were to be friends with you and also discuss on these boards, then it's just a way to further our friendship. Most people, after a few years of use, either recognize that it is different and start to act differently, or simply reduce facebook to a basic tool.

5 As to complaints about vanity, is it vanity to tell your friends what kind of movies you like, or what parties you are going to? Perhaps if you're going to have a method of interrelation between people that involves writing things down and is accessible all the time, you're gonna have to put something down that's more than what comes out in one conversation. Plus, a lot of people see all the empty boxes in the edit section and fill them out because they might as well - most people just think they have nothing to hide, and so put whatever they feel like. Chalk it up to naïveté or whatever, it's not vanity - its just procedure.

Now, if someone is checking his or her profile every hour and changing things, then that's probably vanity.

I don't agree with everything you're saying here, but props for the extremely articulate, thoughtful post.

[quinney]

Originally Posted by rebelprince

I'm 26, upper middle class, in grad school, and 90% of my friends, colleagues, and professors use Facebook and/or MySpace every day.

90% of your demographic group also probably have the time and the interest
to read, in their entirety, the grad school wankathons to which your links refer.

[wirc]

Originally Posted by quinney

90% of your demographic group also probably have the time and the interest to read, in their entirety, the grad school wankathons to which your links refer.

Yes! Insulting the piece without reading it is such a great thing to admit! Or did you read it, and you actually do have the free time to read something? Come on, what a bad way to add such pointless negativity to the discussion.

[hmurchison]

Originally Posted by SpamSandwich

Don't know, but they are the "it" girl right now, aren't they?

I still can't understand why anyone would want to post all of their personal information online, but hey, you can't knock success.

I'm just on there for the chicks.

[Blah64]

Originally Posted by SpamSandwich

I still can't understand why anyone would want to post all of their personal information online, but hey, you can't knock success.

No kidding. Much of it is a generational thing, but even beyond that, why on earth would anyone want to post personal stuff about themselves in a public place? Creeps, miscreants and sickos love you all.

Not to mention, unless you keep it completely sanitized, you're showing your future potential employers, your future potential dates, etc. all about how stupid you are. Good luck.

[zanshin]

Originally Posted by quinney

Because narcissism is a virtue in US culture

People will try to make money off it, revealing (as if it was concealed)
another attribute of our national psyche.

Surely you can't live in such a vacuum as to believe that broadcast narcissism is limited to the US. If so, you seriously need to travel & learn more before offering up such a blatantly flawed opinion.

Just because the media you see locally makes a fortune marketing self-indulgence to people doesn't mean it originated in the USA, or that narcissism or greed is limited to USA borders.

[Kinowolf]

Haha, exactly. Have you ever been to Europe? Japan? South Korea? If you think advertising is persavise in the US, take a trip to Tokyo. Which isn't to say there's nothing wrong with the US, just that painting the rest of the world as a perfect society is just an unfortunately flawed perspective.

PS Facebook + iTunes = Big Moneyz (nicely done chaps, nicely done).

It fits Apple's pattern of corporate partnership (Nike, Starbucks, Facebook...). They're strong brands with a dedication to stable and reliable customer experiences. For example, I love (and prefer) my local coffee shop but everywhere I go I know that Starbucks offers the same consistent atmosphere and (decent) coffee. Similarly, Nike has the most robust web offerings of any sneaker company, and Facebook has a very stable service. Clearly Apple is reaching out to companies with a similar outlook.