Apple Music, Spotify, Rdio, Pandora and other popular music-streaming services could be faced with competition from Facebook as the popular social network is reportedly planning a streaming-music product of its own, Music Aally reported Thursday.
Facebook has been testing ad-supported native videos with a small group of media partners, but that was just a prelude to discussions with major labels about “getting into music” with a full-on subscription product.
While ad-supported native video trials will expand to music videos soon, “the social network is planning to follow that with the launch of an audio music-streaming service to compete with Spotify, Apple Music and others,” reports Music Ally.
However, specifics such as the launch date, price points and more have yet to be determined, though sources insist that an audio streaming service is indeed on Facebook’s roadmap.
For what it’s worth, Facebook is inclined to build its own service rather than buy, say, Spotify, Rdio or some other popular service, but the strategy is not set in stone so anything is possible.
The first phase apparently involves paying royalties to record labels for using their music videos on Facebook. The crucial step for the social networking behemoth involves providing music right holders with an audio identification service similar to YouTube’s Content ID.
Licensed from a third-party, the system is said to let right holders flag user-uploaded videos to either remove them or have their cut of ad revenues.
Talks regarding licensing music vides are at an advanced stage, sources told Music Ally. As for the aforementioned music-streaming service, it’s reportedly “in the early stages of planning.”
Hoping to steal plays from YouTube, Facebook is reportedly willing to match YouTube’s per-stream royalty rates at launch. Later on, labels may agree to improve those rates as Facebook could secure exclusives on specific videos.
One source described Facebook’s impending move into monetized video as being “way, way ahead of YouTube.”
When you think of it, Google’s music efforts, although commendable, have not yielded positive results as the Internet giant got a taste of what its developers had already been eating: Android as a platform does not attract users willing to pay for things and Google Music on iOS faces fierce competition from Apple Music, Spotify and other services.
This leaves a window of opportunity open for Facebook, a ubiquitous social networking service interwoven into virtually every aspect of the Internet and available across every major platform.
More importantly, Facebook’s ad targeting algorithm runs circles around Google, meaning Facebook could easily charge advertisers more to run their ads on music videos than Google.
Source: Music Ally