Why Facebook’s upcoming music service will be a game changer

Facebook hasn’t officially launched its music streaming service yet but there are more than enough signs pointing to the fact that it will launch later this month at the F8 conference. Although we see new features from week to week on Facebook this is probably the biggest thing they will have launched in the last couple of years that could just revolutionize the music business. Music is just about as social an activity as we all carry out on a daily basis and we always listen to suggestions from our friends so this makes perfect sense for Facebook to enter the market. So just how big will Facebook music become and will it be a runaway success?

Look At Myspace

You only have to look at the huge success that Myspace had with music to see how social networking and music go hand in hand. If you believe the reports it even looks as if Facebook could be veering towards a Myspace style design for their new service. Facebook has the experience of hindsight though and will be able to do everything that Myspace did well and cut out all the mistakes that the early music focused social network made. Myspace proved that the appetite was their for music to be more or less front and center in a social network though and that is a great sign for Facebook especially as the technology has moved on and the experience will be far more impressive than what Myspace could offer back in the day.

The Cloud

I’m not sure if Facebook is smart enough to wait until the cloud was working at it’s best for music or if their launch timing is just good luck. With the emergence of Spotify and other cloud based music start ups as well as major players like Apple’s iTunes moving towards a streaming model you have to think that Facebook have timed their entry to the music market to perfection.

Facebook Won’t Do The Heavy Lifting

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There has been plenty of speculation as to what the music service will actually look like when launched but it looks like Facebook will act as the platform and allow 3rd parties to do all the streaming and heavy lifting. This technique has served Facebook well in the games sector where it makes a large portion of its revenues by taking 30% of all their partner’s revenues. The rumors about one of the major partners being Spotify make sense because Spotify has already leveraged Facebook connect to great effect within it’s own app and the two companies share plenty of investors. The chances are that Facebook is going to give others the tools to make music a success and let them develop the innovative solutions that will help engage users.

Music The Most Social Of Activities

Facebook will very quickly own the space on this one. As Myspace proved music is a very social activity and the timing on this one couldn’t be much better with the arrival of streaming music from the cloud. The fact that by this time next year Facebook will have a billion users means that this could be one of the biggest music platforms anybody has ever seen. It has been working on it for a year and shown with games that it knows how to get this right and how to make serious cash by becoming the platform of choice. It’s only about 3 weeks away but this could be absolutely huge. Music is coming to Facebook.