Facebook has gradually been broadening their horizons to include diverse sources of revenue ranging from display advertising to social gaming and everything in between. They have now decided to enter the music business.
For some time now, there have been rumours that Facebook might tie-up with Spotify to launch a music streaming service on their social network.
This service will enable users to play songs simultaneously with their friends. This was recently revealed by tech blog GigaOm. At the recent eG8 forum, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg also mentioned that he believes that music will be the next industry to be disrupted by social.
Apart from this impending partnership with Spotify, it is also expected that Facebook will make similar deals with other music streaming services. A number of speculators believe that the social network is likely to launch a music dashboard, which will enable users to see and stream music based on the recommendations from their friends. Thus, users will know in real-time what music their friends are listening to, just as they can on services such as Last.fm.
It is not yet known how exactly Facebook can be expected to benefit from this facility as the cost of streaming music legally is already quite high, resulting in losses for several music streaming services.
Music streaming and video viewing on Facebook is already a very popular activity and a number of other companies are already capitalising on this fact. Facebook has most probably identified it as a revenue opportunity and wants to earn some money for themselves.
If this service is initiated, it is likely to lead to more advertising on Facebook. The service would also give competition to Apple, who have their own music streaming service, Ping.
