Found Around: Facebook Music Apps vs. Google Plus Music
Written by Aidan Rush Posted in: Found Around on July 07, 2011
Despite Facebook being seven years old, it still has yet to come up with a perfect solution for sharing music. That's just one area in which the new and buzzworthy Google+ could excel past Facebook. If the music marketing and sharing possibilities mentioned by Eliot Van Buskirk in the article below become realities, they could very well be game changing. Check out what he has to say, and feel free to share any other imaginative ideas in the comments!
-Aidan
(Wired) 5 Ways Google+ Could Steal Music Fans from Facebook
Credit: Eliot Van Buskirk
Google’s social network, Google+, is late. Facebook has a big lead, having ousted MySpace, which in turn deposed Friendster, the site that started us all on this path towards recreating our social fabric as a network of connected personal nodes.
Facebook is an excellent tool for sharing music — usually in the form of Google’s YouTube videos — but even the developer of the top music app on Facebook says it doesn’t do enough, music-wise. And when we canvassed the top 20 Facebook music apps, we were shocked by what we found.
The list of the most popular music apps on this, the most popular social network, included werevertumorro and Shane Dawson TV, which aren’t even music apps; they merely alert fans when one of those videobloggers throws up another video on YouTube. Google+ may have a tough time making a dent in the popularity of Facebook. But on at least on the music front it can make a lot of inroads, fast. Fact is that music apps on Facebook are lacking — and this is a real opportunity for a quick win.
Evolver.fm contacted Google to try to talk about its music strategy for Google+, mentioning Facebook’s apparent shortcomings in that area. A spokeswoman declined to comment –in part, she said, because Music Beta by Google is still in, well, beta. But even without discussing it with Google directly, we can spot five ways in which Google could become “besties“ with music enthusiasts to Facebook’s detriment.
1. Easy Sharing
YouTube music videos, which comprise many of the most popular videos on YouTube, are all over Facebook in the United States, and from what Google itself told us, the same is true for Spotify song links in Europe. Facebook is reportedly planning to integrate more tightly with multiple music services, the way it recently did with MOG, but still has a ways to go on that front. Meanwhile, Google has thousands of engineers, all of whose yearly bonuses will be tied to how “social” they can make its offerings. Clearly, Google+ could give Facebook a run for its money when it comes to sharing music from — and across — all of the music services (read: silos) upon which we depend.
