You might remember that some time ago Apple launched its first attempt at a social network with “Ping“. When it launched, many thought this would be a perfect spot for Apple and Facebook to partner by sharing and selling music on Facebook’s platform.

That turned out to not be the case, and many stories surfaced about how Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg didn’t see eye to eye with then Apple CEO Steve Jobs. No deal was done, no partnership between the two were made. That fact however, hasn’t stopped Apple from utilizing Facebook for marketing purposes, just as other companies do on the platform.

The folks on the marketing team for Apple’s App Store and iTunes have found its Facebook pages as a great way to promote new apps and music available, and interact with people who are doing the buying.

Its Facebook page has 4,087,987 Likes and currently has 99,795 talking about it in status updates and comments on the social network. Its iTunes page is doing even better with 19,391,307 Likes and has 460,070 talking about it.

What’s more interesting than the numbers is what Apple is doing on its pages. For example, on the App Store page, the company is playing word games with fans by scrambling up the name of an app and letting people guess which app it is:

The iTunes page is currently taking advantage of Madonna’s Super Bowl halftime performance by promoting her new album:

While Apple’s Ping product has proved to be a serious loser in its attempt to becoming a huge music-focused social network, it looks like Apple hasn’t taken the lack of partnership with Facebook personally at all. So while no deal could be made between the two companies, Apple wasn’t willing to run away from the social network, because without Facebook, Apple would have nowhere else to turn to socially pimp its wares. Facebook knows that, and ended up getting Apple to use them just like everyone else.

Digital music has transformed year after year since Shawn Fanning brought us Napster in 1999. The service allowed you to easily download music in MP3 format that you hadn’t paid for. Needless to say, the record industry wanted to shut it down immediately. It took them two years to do so.

By 2001, the “damage” was done. People realized that they shouldn’t have to pay over ten dollars to buy a CD for a song or two that they wanted to listen to from time to time. The record labels completely missed the point, and so did the outspoken band Metallica. Thousands of artists, mostly independent, saw the power that Napster brought to us. On demand music listening and sharing could indeed generate revenue. In near real-time.

Spotify vs. iTunes

iTunes was groundbreaking, there is no doubt about it. On January 9, 2001, Steve Jobs stood on stage and announced a virtual “store”, where you could pay only .99 cents per track. You could listen to a thirty-second preview of the song, so you no longer needed to waste money on an entire album. iTunes was the “happy medium” that record labels finally settled for after Napster upended the industry.

Steve Jobs could tell record labels that its music could be pirated and shared freely, or sold on a track by track basis on a platform of which the world has never seen. This could give control back to the record labels. He won and so did iTunes.

On demand vs. pay for play

What Napster uncovered was that people didn’t want to buy albums or tracks, they wanted to listen to music at the exact moment that they wanted to. They didn’t want to drive to a store, wait in line, and find out that 75% of the album sucked. Consumers heard a song on the radio and wanted to hear it over and over again. On demand.

Of course, people were doing this for free, and there’s no doubt that a lot of money was lost for artists during the hey-day of Napster. But bands like “Dave Matthews Band” has always adopted freely distributing its music, allowing fans to record and share music from its live shows. That band and many others realized that if people could listen to music when they wanted, and easily, they would buy more tickets and T-Shirts, as well as spread the word about their band.

It was almost a trade-off. Take our music, but if you love it, tell the world about it. It was a smart bet.

The state of online music

Numerous music services have seen the light of day since Napster was released. Napster is actually still alive and owned by Best Buy. Amazon sells MP3s on its site, even Wal-Mart has its own service. Pandora has taken the world by storm with its streaming music based on the Music Genome Project. But nothing beats the on-demand listening experience. Searching through an infinite database for that track that caught your ear or makes you remember a moment in your life is powerful. Spotify knew that, and Spotify has implemented it perfectly.

Since Sean Parker had an interest in disrupting the music business, he reached out to Spotify in 2009, letting them know what he thought about the company in detail. He expressed interested in investing in them, and told them that his friend Mark Zuckerberg liked its service. Mark Zuckerberg of course has access to over 800 million users on Facebook, most of which love music. Don’t forget, Sean Parker was the President of Facebook during its early years. Facebook will most certainly see revenue from Spotify subscriptions generated leveraging its open graph.

A match made in heaven for Facebook, a match made in hell for Apple

The partnership between Facebook and Spotify makes complete sense. Spotify was smart enough to know that the desktop music experience was important, so it has stuck with having a desktop app along with its mobile app. Paying a subscription price of $9.99 lets you listen to music on your mobile device, even when you’re offline. At Facebook’s f8 conference, the two companies dropped a bomb. Full integration of Facebook and Spotify, along with a new music section on Facebook. I’m not sure iTunes can compete with this powerhouse over the next five years.

The thing that Spotify does really well that iTunes cannot compete with, is social. Spotify is built around favoriting things, creating and sharing playlists, none of which iTunes supports. Apple attempted to create its own music social network called “Ping”, but I can without a doubt call it a failure to date. Appled failed to parnter with Facebook on connecting accounts, and it was obvious to me at the time, why. Spotify. Apple can’t compete with Spotify in that when you listen to a song, and we’re friends on Facebook, I can immediately listen to that song. For no cost. iTunes would like to charge you 99 cents to listen to the song. That’s too much friction for social music. After all, music sells more music.

This is of course my opinion, but I’ve been using Spotify for a few years now and am extremely passionate about music. I’ve not once felt a close connection to iTunes, and it wasn’t always about the money. The friction and lack of innovation in socializing music made it feel sterile to me. Spotify has changed all of that.

Apple should be working on bringing iTunes up to speed, because it has felt like a dinosaur for years. Almost as much as the record player feels like now.

Napster caused a problem, and Apple solved it. It only makes sense that Spotify does it best, with Sean Parker leading the way.

Netflix, which as gotten a lot of grief lately from consumers after the Qwikster open and close, has announced a new streaming partnership with the CW Network owned by CBS Corp. and Warner Bros.

Clearly, the latest Qwikster news hasn’t scared networks away from wanting their content in an on demand streaming format in homes everywhere.

All past seasons of all CW shows, as well as shows in its Current schedule through the 2015 season will be included in the partnership. More than likely, more partners will get involved soon, as the market is waiting to see how streaming will take off and who will be the major player.

The CW claims to have over 700 hours of past season programing, including popular shows such as “Gossip Girl” and “One Tree Hill”. Both of these shows have a heavy female demographic, so a new audience is clearly adopting Netflix streaming. It’s not just for geeks without TVs any more.

The interesting part of this deal is that Netflix is gaining access and rights to shows not even shown on CBS’ own service, Hulu. Those shows include “The Vampire Diaries” and “90210″.

Netflix is keeping its DVD and streaming business as one entity, and it will be interesting to watch what comes in the near future for the company.

This deal comes at the right time for Netflix, as the company just lost Starz as a partner on September 1st, which left a huge hole in its streaming content catalog.

Now that we know that Facebook has over 800 million users, music on Facebook is a serious business. Streaming music has never been embraced by record labels, but even they can’t ignore these numbers.

Spotify CEO Daniel EK hit the stage at Facebook’s F8 event today and told us that Spotify users who use Facebook listen to more music than anyone else on their platform. Not only that, they are the most engaged, and are more than twice as likely to pay for music.

Spotify is showing that people will pay for music in ways other than track by track in iTunes. The company has had deep Facebook integration for some time now, being the first share option in the desktop and mobile app of Spotify. Of course, former Facebook President Sean Parker is an executive and advisor at Spotify, which is important to note.

The company has posted this video that illustrates their new Facebook initiatives:

In a blog post today, Ek discusses the new and powerful integration with Facebook:

You’ll now start seeing new music posts and play buttons all over your newsfeeds. Hit a play button and the music starts. Right there. Spotify fires up to give you a new soundtrack to your social life. Check out your new Music Dashboard and your real-time ticker to discover the music that’s trending with your friends.

This integration with Facebook will help everyone to discover more free music than ever before. Thanks to our unrivalled, truly free service, users can just hit play to enjoy the music, no hassle, no gimmicks; month after month after month.

We hope many more people can enjoy the musical journeys that this integration will bring. Like the thrill of looking through a friend’s music collection and finding a track that blows your mind. Or sending birthday playlists across the planet.

Having free access to music on Facebook also gives us an opportunity to express ourselves in a new way. We’re proud to share pictures of our lives. Now we can say something about ourselves through music. “Hi I’m Daniel – here’s some Daft Punk.”

We know that Spotify’s users who connect to Facebook listen to more music on a weekly basis. They listen to a wider variety of music – in fact we have more than 400 million playlists created in Spotify now. Because these users are more social, they’re more engaged. Because they’re more engaged, they’re more than twice as likely to pay for music.

Social discovery on Facebook means that we’re bringing people back to paying for music again. And that‘s how the brilliant artists who create this music can continue creating it for us to enjoy.

Make sure to check out all of our F8 coverage

Orange and Google have announced an official partnership that will see Orange become the first operator to give customers one-click access in Europe to Google Mobile Apps including Google Maps, Google News, Google Search and Mail.

According to the release, the agreement is a long term multi-year strategic partnership that will bring out the best in content and search innovation from both partners and access to enhanced search features, Orange content, and other familiar Google products and services.

Orange plans to launch Google Mobile App across its footprint in a phased approach and will deliver it across a large range of Orange Signature phones, which are customised for a better user experience. Initially, Orange is giving customers instant access to Google Search™ from the homescreen on Signature Android handsets, alongside other services such as Orange TV.

Vic Gundotra, Vice-President of Engineering at Google, says: “Google Mobile App makes it easier than ever for people to find and use information that matters to them when they’re on the move. Partnering with Orange is a great opportunity for us to provide their customers across Europe with instant access to the web.”

Orange will also sell iPhones in the UK from November 10th.