Facebook has been in talks with Spotify to integrate music based services into its website. The giant social network is rumored to expand its horizons even further, by adding music and media to it’s already strong coverage of news, retailing and games.
According to some sources, Facebook’s move into music will begin with Spotify, but it will choose to include other music services and applications. In that case, it is certain that the company is working on securing more partners for its f8 Developer Conference, which is due to commence in August 2011.
How the Music Dashboard in Facebook shape up:
Since Facebook aims to cater to all the tastes, it will provide tools that will allow different music establishments to offer their services on the social network. The company is rumored to be making the following features available for its partners:
- In the left-hand column, right where Facebook lists Photos, Friends, Places, Groups, Deals, Pages, and Games, you will find a new tab called Music. This tab will show up if a user has listened to music with one of Facebook’s partner music services.
- Clicking on this new tab will open a page called Music Dashboard.
- A page with snapshot of all the songs you have listened to on any specific service and your top tracks and the number of times you have listened to those tracks.
- The Persistent Playback/Pause Button at the bottom of the Facebook page, where currently you have the chat icon. This button essentially is like a quick snapshot and controller of the music experience. Hover over it and you can see what is playing on whatever service you might be logged into using Facebook Connect. It also allows you to play or pause a track once you discover it on Facebook. It is also linked to the play buttons in the news feed.
The Music Dashboard itself will reportedly have a Recommended songs, where you can list music for your friends to find out, Music Notification feature to show whether your friends have listened to any songs recommended by you, as well as a “happening now” ticker to inform you what is happening in your social and musical world, including songs that your friends are listening to.
By opening its platform, Facebook would make money on music purchases or sign-ups via their agreements with the various music companies. This means it would not have to limit its options by exclusively partnering with a service like Spotify, thus increasing its revenue.
Facebook’s only challenger in this multi-layered musical social interaction would be Apple’s Ping, but with Facebook’s deep-rooted Connects and Likes, as well as its possible strong link to the rest of what Facebook has to offer, the Music Dashboard is set to take the trophy.
