tl;dr;<p>"Facebook users will see a Spotify icon appear on the left side of their newsfeed"<p>"Clicking on the Spotify icon will install the service on their desktop in the background, and also allow users play from Spotify’s library of millions of songs through Facebook."<p>"The service will include a function that lets Facebook users listen to music simultaneously with their friends over the social network, one of the sources said."<p>"...but it will only be available for Facebook users in countries where Spotify has a presence, excluding the all-important United States."<p>"No money is changing hands with this partnership"
This title is misleading - Facebook is not launching a music service. Spotify already has a music service and it already integrates with Facebook in a nice way, though perhaps some people will like to launch it from the FB website, who knows. The simultaneous play feature is cute, but seems more like something they added for publicity.<p>I'm expecting more headlines like this as Facebook heads towards IPO.
I'm in Spain and I have Spotify. I must be one the few that actually don't like it.<p>I love music but I have no clue about artist names, bands, etc. This is why I LOVE Pandora.<p>Just enter a familiar name, from the few that I know and I can spend hours listening to good music.<p>Actually is so good is annoying, because I have to constantly upvote all the songs.<p>I tried many many times to like Spotify, but Pandora wins by a long shot.
"...it will only be available for Facebook users in countries where Spotify has a presence, excluding the all-important United States."<p>I guess I assumed since Facebook is based in the US this meant that Spotify would be available in the US too, but on second thought, I'm sure Facebook is big everywhere.
Facebook is not partnering with Spotify in any way.<p>- This "icon" on the left of the homepage is simply a bookmark, a feature that any application on Facebook can choose to use.<p>- Facebook is an open platform and has yet to choose a winner among third parties for anything, and when they do they buy them and rebuild the product in house.<p>- Spotify does not work in the United States.<p>- Spotify simply has deep Facebook integrations, tech writers are either completely misunderstanding the information they stumbled upon OR they are blatantly turning this into a bigger story in order to get page views and attention.
The announcement seems driven more by why Facebook would want (capturing users, adding a revenue stream) than what users would want (sharing musically cheaply and easily). Hard to see how this competes well with YouTube music videos. Seems like everyone is looking to connect social networking and music. MySpace has (kind of) held on because of the connection but there are many failures including the supposed music heavyweight Apple's Ping.
<i>The service will include a function that lets Facebook users listen to music simultaneously with their friends over the social network, one of the sources said.</i><p>Why? Maybe this function will be an interesting experiment, but I just don't see it working out. Honestly, does anybody really care if their friend is listening to the same song (in a different geographic location) simultaneously? Where's the value added? What does anybody gain from this? Maybe social has a place in music, but this isn't it.<p>Edit: I'm not disputing the fact that bonding doesn't happen over music (clearly it does, as anybody who has ever listened to a song with another person would know), but I fail to see the purpose of <i>simultaneous</i> listening across the world.
Like.fm just released a "friend panel" that lets you chat and see what your friends are listening to:
<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mbnhjlkenpmankjjbbolibfcghileiae" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mbnhjlkenpmankjjbb...</a><p>Except this works with whatever website you're already listening to music from.<p>Also, the features they explained can all be achieved via a conventional facebook canvas app. A spotify icon in the left side? Isn't that just the app bookmark?<p>I think the title is probably just mega-linkbait. It's most likely Spotify just adding more facebook integration.
It'd be nice if a music service came out that didn't revolve around introducing you to new music or alerting you to what your friends are listening to. Or one that realizes the music you might like could be based on more than other bands you and/or your friends are already into (would any of these services assume that a Metallica fan might also dig Katy Perry?). There's a limit to how much stuff Facebook needs tacked onto it. And how many "hubs" for media already exist? At what point does this start looking like putting the VCR inside the TV set?<p>And not everything gets to become FarmVille.
I hope there will be a way to just use Spotify without using Facebook. It seems like that could become obnoxious if I had to sign into Facebook every time I wanted to listen to music.
Spotify isnt available in the US. <a href="http://www.spotify.com/int/why-not-available/" rel="nofollow">http://www.spotify.com/int/why-not-available/</a><p>So, the facebook integration is an add-on for users that already use/can use spotify?