Facebook is reportedly launching a new music service on September 22nd, reports CNBC. That is also the date of Facebook’s annual f8 Developer Conference.
John Fortt of CNBC’s Fast Money Halftime Report is saying that ‘someone familiar with the plans’ has told him that “Facebook plans to launch its long rumored music service at the f8 conference on September 22nd.”
Fortt goes on to state that it seems likely that Facebook won’t actually host the music, but will “partner with others who do that.”
It seems likely at this point that the partnership will be with Spotify, who has been previously rumored to be launching a music service with Facebook, as we reported in May. Fortt suggests that Facebook will actually be partnering with Spotify, Rdio and MOG, so as not to play favorites, which is backed up by sources which have told the same to Mashable.
In June, a hacker claimed to have found evidence of the service, called ‘Facebook Vibes’, on Facebook’s site. According to the hacker, Jeff Rose, a string in the download link for the recent Facebook Video Calling app makes reference to a ‘Facebook Vibes’ product that Rose conjectured might be a music offering.
The video chat plugin, called peep, is what is downloaded now. At some point in the future they seem to be prepared to download another app though, called Facebook Vibes. I searched around to see what this is all about, and it seems that this is an unannounced feature that has yet to be released. The vibes app connects with a music download dialog in the page though, so I’m guessing that with this release we are seeing the seeds for Facebook’s upcoming music offering.
Facebook has been relatively late to the music service game, which now has representatives from most of the other major players including Google Music, iTunes Match and Amazon Cloud Player. A hub-like service that gave people access to their favorite streaming service from right inside Facebook would be a departure from the strategy of its competitors, who are all aiming to allow people to store music in the cloud and play it back.
It would also allow them to be more flexible, perhaps allowing other providers to use a streaming API in the future. We’ll find out the details at the f8 conference next month.
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