Facebook’s Music Platform Plans Should Surface Next Week

Facebook is expected to announce the launch of its much-hyped music service in f8 – its annual developers’ conference – on 22nd September. ^[1] The social networking giant is expected to partner with digital music providers Spotify, MOG and Rdio in this initiative. After having success with online games such as Mafia Wars and Farmville, Facebook’s digital music service suggests that the company is steadily moving in the digital content space, giving struggling competitors such as Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) and AOL (NYSE:AOL) even bigger reasons to worry about.

We currently value Facebook at around $45 billion.

Facebook Music: What’s In Store For Users?

Similar to its applications and games, Facebook does not intend to itself become a hosting site for digital music. Instead, the company would be acting as a platform for providing digital music content from providers such as Spotify that already have their music licensing in place. It’s a win-win situation as Facebook’s partners get the advantage of Facebook’s immense reach of +750 million users while Facebook gets additional time spent on its website.

While it might be too early to say that this launch will revolutionize digital music, online music providers such as Spotify and Rdio are bound to benefit from Facebook’s key networking features such as the “Like” button and the news feed (for instance, the user profile will automatically update the music track he/she is listening to).

This launch is also a sign of bigger things to come, and Facebook might not be stopping at just music for its content. In fact, it would not be a surprise if we soon see online video providers such as Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) being roped in to provide video content for the company.

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1. Mashable: Facebook To Launch Music Platform With Spotify, MOG & Rdio [↩]