On the day before their big F8 developers conference, our first impression on hearing the latest news from Facebook wanting to become a music platform was “didn’t MySpace already try this?” While MySpace isn’t doing well and dropped considerably on the radar among youth culture while other social networks have risen (see our Fall Youth Culture Study 2011 for more details), Facebook’s latest ideas may actually be different -and on target.
Facebook is expected to partner with Spotify, Rdio, Rhapsody, and Mog, some in the industry are saying, coming out of the recent TechCrunch Disrupt Conference last week, and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek is expected to speak at the F8 summit on the future of digital music. As we’ve written about before, what happens in the music industry is often a precursor of directions in technology and entertainment, and even fashion as a new generation of tech-savvy young people often are first to adopt such changes which then seeps into other parts of their lifestyles.
Changes at Facebook, for anyone who’s missed it this past week, include various tweaks such as customized photos, highlighted updates from friends you interact with most, and various List features -which is a lot like Twitter. They’ve also added a new Subscribe button so you can Subscribe to your favorite news feed content, which again, is very Twitter-like.
But back to becoming a music platform, if they are able make it possible to share music on different services, this is something to note and a big step in the right direction. Facebook is supposedly going bigger, however, with a campaign called “Read, Watch, Listen” in an attempt to becoming an entertainment platform overall.
We’re wondering how Twitter and Tumblr are feeling about all of this. Stay tuned for more from F8.
For more information about the Digital Lifestyle of Youth Culture, including social networking patterns, forecasts, preferences, contact us about our latest Studies.
