This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Digital
Facebook talks up importance of timeline apps in digital music
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 7 November 2012
Facebook has published some stats about the sharing of music data via the uber-social-network, possibly to remind the operators of digital music services that integration with the social media platform remains an important way to recruit and engage users.
Writing in a blog post that name checks various Facebook integrated music apps, the company’s Lincoln Hochberg wrote: “Since September 2011, 62.6 million songs have been played 22 billion times through timeline apps – that’s about 210,000 years worth of music. This is happening across all types of music apps, from those that tailor music to your tastes, to apps that recommend music based on the time of day and what you’re doing”.
September last year, of course, was when Facebook first introduced the Timeline format for its user profiles, offering a new way for digital content providers to integrate with the social network, so that consumers could opt to automatically share information about the music they were listening to with their friends on the platform (the assumption being that people would much rather see an endless stream of information without context than learn about people’s genuine interests).
Interestingly the new blog post only mentions Spotify in passing, despite its integration with Facebook Timeline being the most hyped by the social network a year ago, hype that helped the European streaming service gain ground in the US, but which also escalated the backlash against the high profile digital music platform in some circles.
Music-based Facebook apps given more attention in the new blog post include 8tracks, Songza and BandPage. Even though earlier this year Rootmusic’s BandPage app was one some felt might be negatively impacted by changes to the Facebook system.
