Called Music Stories, Facebook said it has been created to enable ‘better music discovery and sharing, ‘ but critics may claim it’s a way to make money. If they like what they hear, they can click on the respective Apple Music or Spotify link to purchase the song or album, or otherwise subscribe to the service(s). After a few less-than-stellar starts and stops, including a much-maligned 2011 feature which telegraphed Facebook user’s Spotify listens to their friends, the company is taking a much more measured approach to its new foray into music.
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Music Stories – only available for Facebook’s iOS app users as of now – pulls in streams shared to Facebook from Spotify and Apple Music and repackages them in Facebook’s new audio player, allowing users to sample the songs and albums without having to leave the app. Facebook is rolling out a new post format that lets people listen to 30-second clips of shared songs. While lately the company has been focusing on news and video, Music Stories makes it easier to share another type of popular content without roundabout methods. Users will also be able to directly purchase songs from the iTunes Store through their news feed.
According to Facebook’s director of product Michael Cerda blog post, they “will expand Music Story support for additional streaming music services” beyond Apple Music and Spotify.
Facebook has announced yet another feature to keep you locked in to its platform. Spotify previously required you to sign up for the service via your Facebook account, and it would automatically post the songs you were listening to on the social network.
If the Music Stories feature becomes successful, it could add up another milestone to Facebook’s notoriety between other social networking sites – as well as engrossing Apple’s already large profit on the market.
Impact on you: This partnership with Facebook is a signal that Apple Music is slowly escaping from the closed iTunes system and into the real world (wide web).
You can now take a link from Apple Music or Spotify and share it within Facebook. Almost 900 million people use Facebook on mobile devices every day, and there’s little reason to think Facebook’s ambitions with music will stop at song previews.
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On Wednesday, I delivered a guest lecture to RTA students at Ryerson University about the situation involving streaming music services and the fees they pay out to artists.
