Facebook reportedly to launch ‘Music Dashboard’, Spotify and others to partner

Facebook’s rumoured partnership with online music-streaming service Spotify will reportedly see the world’s largest social network integrate a new “Music Dashboard” for its users, but open its service to a number of other music companies, GigaOM reports.

GigaOM founder Om Malik believes Facebook’s move into music will begin with Spotify but will not end with the Sweden-based company, instead it will choose to include other music services and applications, according to his sources. Mailk says that the company is working on securing more partners in time for its f8 Developer Conference, which is due to take place in August 2011.

Facebook aims to cater for all tastes, providing tools that will allow different music services to offer their services on the social network. The company is rumoured 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 also 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. 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.

The Music Dashboard is said to include a notification service which shows if your friends have listened to songs recommended by you, listing songs suggested by your friends, a top songs and top albums section. Malik also suggests that the “Happening Now” feature (which we reported earlier in the month) will show all of the latest musical happenings by your friends as they happen, keeping it away from the main News Feed.

By opening its platform, Facebook would make money on music purchases or signups 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.