Facebook is planning to integrate streaming-music services into its platform and will soon have a new option called Music in the site’s left-hand pane. By music service of facebook, users will be able to access a new page called Music Dashboard, allowing them to see what songs have been recommended to them by friends, which tracks friends have been listening to most often and the latest songs played across their social network. The Dashboard will reportedly feature a notifications pane to inform users when friends listened to songs they’ve recommended and the new feature will also bring music playback controls to the bottom of the page so users can listen to songs right from Facebook……..
Facebook reportedly has a new music service in the works that allows users to play music from services like Spotify through their Facebook page, as well as see what their friends are listening to and this social site plans to partner with music streaming service Spotify, as well as other music services and applications, to launch a new social music platform that will allow users to listen to music directly through Facebook, and check out what music their friends are listening to, in real time. The new service will reportedly be accessed through a new Music tab in the left-hand column of users’ Facebook homepage. The tab will only appear “if a user has listened to music with one of Facebook’s partner music services,” says GigaOm founder Om Malik. Clicking the tab will open the Music Dashboard page. There, users can see all the tracks they’ve listened to, as well as top tracks and the number of times each track has played. Facebook’s music plans are aimed at capitalizing on just such a future. Here is what Facebook is planning to launch as part of its music efforts, based on pitches it has made to some of the music services:
- 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.
- 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. Mouse 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.
- A page with snapshot of all the songs you have listened to on any specific service and also your top tracks and the number of times you have listened to those tracks.
The Music Dashboard will have the following features:
- Music Notifications: here you have notifications that show if your friends have listened to songs recommended by you or on your profile.
- Recommended Songs: You can get a list of songs heard and recommended by your friends. You can also play them back by clicking the play icon.
- Top Songs from friends.
- Top Albums from friends, with cover art.
- Recent listens from your friends.
- In the upper-right corner there will be a “happening now” ticker that shows what is happening in your social and musical universe, including songs that your friends are playing. There is some talk that this “Happening Now ticker” would show-up all throughout your music experience and not just on the music dashboard.
According to Business Insider, the new service could become a “billion dollar” business for Facebook. The social network’s goal, says BI‘s Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, is to “do for music what it did for games: use its social graph to help Facebook users discover music and help music startups get users.” Of course, with the massive licensing fees that go along with (legally) streaming music, it’s not yet clear how Facebook will make money off the new service. But if Music Dashboard does come to fruition and works well to boot then Facebook has the potential to cut into Apple’s iTunes territory. News of Music Dashboard follows a variety of reports that indicate a rift between Apple and Facebook. Apple’s recent announcement that Twitter not Facebook will receive deep-level integration into iOS 5 sparked murmurs that the two companies were at odds. Then, just last week rumors surfaced that Facebook has a web-based app market place, accessible through mobile Safari, that could compete with Apple’s App Store.
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