Mark Zuckerberg took the stage at the Facebook F8 developer summit today, unveiling a number of new Facebook features. Some of the most notable changes include integration with music streaming services, which Facebook might be using to challenge Apple and their upcoming iCloud and iTunes Match features.
In addition to a new Timeline feature, which Facebook describes as “the story of your life, in a single page”, as well as new features relating to graphs, apps, and the way you interact with your social connections, Facebook announced a partnership with Spotify which will allow you to install a unique Spotify Facebook app to discover and stream new music from Spotify’s vast library, and will even let you listen to music with your friends over the web in realtime.
The service isn’t due to launch for at least a couple of weeks, but will bring a Spotify icon to the main Facebook interface which, through the use of a helper app, will allow access to Spotify’s entire music library. This is just one more way in which Facebook seems to be moving towards becoming more than just a social networking site, transforming themselves a hub for media sharing as well.
In all reality, Facebook’s new music service really isn’t much of a threat to Apple at all. While services like Spotify are popular, Apple has yet to introduce a streaming service. Although some suspect that streaming services like this could jeopardize the future of the iTunes Store, many people still desire to “own” their music, and desire the ability to listen to their collections both online and off.
Additionally, the fact that streaming services like Pandora and Spotify have been around for quite some time, and have yet to significantly jeopardize Apple’s iTunes Store revenues is significant, and demonstrates that it will take more than a clever social music streaming service to dethrone Apple, a company that holds a lot of power in the music industry and will not easily be defeated on their own soil.
