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Digital Top Stories
Spotify to get presence on Facebook, though is this really the launch of Facebook Music?
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 26 May 2011
There was a bit of a flutter of chatter yesterday after Forbes reported that Facebook were about to announce a partnership with Spotify that would see the streaming music service added as a function to the social networking platform, offering, for the first time, an official music listening service via the social media giant, albeit only in territories where Spot already operates.
Forbes noted that Facebook has dabbled with the idea of formally bringing a music service within its walled garden for years, and has reportedly got close to deals with other music services or back-end content providers over the years, generally shying away from the idea of going the MySpace route and entering directly into costly deals with the music majors.
Forbes say a Spotify icon will soon appear on the left hand side of the Facebook screen, through which users will be able to access the streaming platform’s freemium service (ten hours listening a month, up to five plays of any one track), presumably through the browser rather than Spotify proprietary player. Spotify won’t be paid or offered a cut of Facebook’s ad revenues, Forbes say, but it sees the partnership as a great platform to upsell its five or ten pounds a month premium service.
However, before you all get too excited about Facebook and Spotify collaborating to take over the digital music world, some in both the music and tech industries have played down the reports. Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg told a conference in Paris this week that striking up partnerships with various content companies, especially music and movie providers, was at the top of his agenda at the moment, and many reckon the deal with Spotify is one of several, and therefore not as an strong an alliance as perhaps Forbes has suggested.
Billboard adds that various music services – including some already operational in the US – have been in similar talks with Facebook in recent months, and Spotify, therefore, could be one of a number of new musical icons to be added to the social networking site over the summer.
