Rhapsody Streams Full-Songs (with Limitations) To Facebook

Seems a bit silly to limit full streams to Rhapsody subscribers, as registered imeem users can already do so for free - as well as embed tracks and playlists anywhere.

By Antony Bruno, Billboard:

Rhapsody has beta-launched a Facebook widget designed to extend full-song music streaming into the popular social network.

Existing Rhapsody subscribers will be able to play an unlimited number of full songs, while non-subscribers will be limited to the 25 free songs a month that are offered under the company’s ad-supported model.

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2007 U.S. Social Network Advertising 960M

Extrapolating; Facebook and MySpace combined are projected to generate only 2.8B in worldwide advertising revenue in 2011, of which a 50% revenue share with major labels would provide a total 1.4B in gross income to subsidize an industry-wide free-music initiative. The recorded music industry is currently projected to generate in the area of 30B in global sales for 2007.

From Peter Kafka, Silicon Valley Insider:

A reminder, via eMarketer, that hype aside, advertising spend on online social networks is still relatively modest: About $960 million in the U.S. this year, (and merely another $300 million in the rest of the world) -- less than 5% of the total U.S. market.

Keep in mind that most of those dollars are from guaranteed deals from Google and Microsoft, who have multiyear pacts with MySpace and Facebook, respectively -- and by all accounts, both GOOG and MSFT made those commitments for strategic reasons, not financial ones.

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From eMarketer:

• MySpace and Facebook together receive more than 70% of all ad spending.


• 50% of all online adults and 84% of online teens will use social networking each month in the U.S. by 2011.


• Worldwide social network ad spending to top $4 billion in 2011.

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Last.fm Builds Music Application for Ning’s Growing Platform of Social Networks

From Business Wire:

Last.fm, the music discovery and social networking website, announced today the launch of a music application for the 122,000 social networks currently on the Ning’s network. The application is designed to take advantage of the new OpenSocial standard, which is spearheaded by Google and was announced earlier this month.

Ning – a platform for creating social networks – is among the early supporters of the OpenSocial, which is a common programming interface for Web-based social networking applications.

Beginning today, users of the Ning platform will be able to add Last.fm’s music application to their personalized homepage on any of Ning’s network of sites. Music fans will also soon be able to add the Last.fm application directly to a host of social networking sites including MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, among the many other sites participating in OpenSocial.

Last.fm’s music application will enable music fans to create a personalized display of their favorite artists. The application can be customized according to taste, and offers the ability to launch a radio station based on any of the user’s chosen artists. The application marks the first step in Last.fm’s initiative to develop for OpenSocial.

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Zune Social Lets You Peep On Your Friends' Music Habits

From Jason Chen, Gizmodo:

You saw our complete Zune guide yesterday, but what you didn't see was the Zune Social—which didn't go up until today! The social is pretty much Facebook for music (and only music), and displays the stuff you and people on your list have listened to on their Zune players. It really helps your enjoyment if you've got more than one friend who has the Zune, which is probably the point.

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iLike Consolidates Promotional Chaos, Offers Single-Point Updating

From Alexandra Osorio, Digital Music News:

Artists have more places than ever to promote their music, but that creates an almost unmanageable maintenance issue. Instead of writing songs, developing artists are now being dragged into endless and repetitive promotional updates. A number of companies and entrepreneurs are addressing that concern, including quickly growing networking play iLike. Just recently, the company unveiled its Universal Artist Dashboard, a tool designed to let artists universally update a large number of profile pages.

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