Something to watch for in the next few days will be what could be considered the “Facebook Effect” on music services. In addition to the many services announcing their integration for the new Facebook Timeline, many will be making changes to their services internally to better take advantage of the new Facebook capabilities.
Facebook Music: What it is, What it isn’t, and What it Means
Some already occurred, as the free music tiers introduced by MOG and hinted at by Rdio. Others will soon follow. Take RootMusic. Speaking by phone from the floor of the F8 conference today, founder and CEO J Sider tipped us off to a pending integration with Spotify for its popular Band Pages app.
“Streaming music has never been our model,” he said. “So we’re excited to work with different partners that can provide that. Over the next few days, we’ll be rolling out a pretty big integration with Spotify.”
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RootMusic in particular could have gone either way on today’s news. In one sense, given the ability for an artist to post things like playlists (even if it’s just playlists of their own songs) and other information to their main profile now, the need for BandPages could have been a question. But depending on how BandPages integrates Spotify, the details of which won’t be known until next week, this Facebook update may just breathe new life into what’s become the most popular music app on Facebook.
It’ll also be very interesting to see how the Spotify/Facebook tag team bleeds into other music services and apps. Free on-demand music is a feature that can be used by almost any service with hooks into the music industry. Think Ticketmaster for ticket sales, or Facebook ads promoting a new artist. The upshot is that we’re just starting to see the potential of today’s announcement.