Music Industry

Facebook Announces “Music Stories”

Whoa. Since my whole career is based on telling stories about music, anytime I see “music” and “stories” in a sentence, I’m interested.

Facebook is once again trying to make music work for them.  Here’s what Billboard reports.

Facebook is trying to make music work… again. After some less-than-stellar starts and stops, including a much-maligned 2011 feature which telegraphed Facebook user’s Spotify listens to their friends, the company is taking a much more measured approach to its new foray into music. As one source says frankly, music as a thing hasn’t really existed on the platform. Now it will… sort of.

Beginning today, songs shared either through a URL or “Share on Facebook” button within Spotify and Apple Music will appear in the news feeds of iOS users as 30-second song samples. (The 30-second samples were no doubt, as will be obvious to anyone with experience in music, pretty easy to negotiate.) If a song is interesting enough after a handful seconds, fans can add that music to their streaming service accounts. In a blog post on the release, director of product Michael Cerda says the company “will expand Music Story support for additional streaming music services soon.”

And that’s pretty much it, for now.

Okay, but there could be more, right? Read on here.

Alan Cross

is an internationally known broadcaster, interviewer, writer, consultant, blogger and speaker. In his 40+ years in the music business, Alan has interviewed the biggest names in rock, from David Bowie and U2 to Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters. He’s also known as a musicologist and documentarian through programs like The Ongoing History of New Music.

Alan Cross has 38019 posts and counting. See all posts by Alan Cross

One thought on “Facebook Announces “Music Stories”

  • Hi Alan,

    Have you ever used or looked at last.fm much? I feel like this kind of feature would make way more sense there.

    That site though seems to be rather rudderless these days. Recently underwent a visual update which basically broke more features rather than improving anything.

    One cool feature, tangentially related, introduced a few years ago that I really enjoy however is where it reminds you about music you used to listen to but have neglected for some time.

    Reminds me often of Saturna and White Rose Movement, both of which I believe I first discovered on this blog.

    Reply

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