Apple’s Ping: iTunes Gets Social

7/9/2010

Apple’s Ping: iTunes Gets Social

Written by Matt Mint & Ciarán Norris

7/9/2010

Apple’s Ping: iTunes Gets Social

iTunes 10.0 – Music 2.0?

Having taken on the music industry, mobile manufacturers and advertising networks, Apple have

finally thrown their hat into the social networking ring. As with all Apple developments, there has

been a large amount of excitement around the news, but also speculation around whether it will be

a success and, if so, whether it can be a genuine competitor to other major social players such as

Facebook and Twitter.

Apple made their grand entrance by extending the capabilities of their iTunes software. By

enabling people using their latest version, iTunes 10.0, to follow their favourite artists and see what

their friends are listening to, they hope to create a social network from their existing 160m strong

user base (Facebook has 500m, Twitter 145m).

It doesn’t stop there either; users will also be able to use the platform to buy tickets to see their

favourite artists, which is a useful extension to their current ecommerce capabilities. As such, by

adding social functionality to the world’s pre-eminent music platform, it would seem that Apple

should be on to a winner.

Anti-Social?

Unfortunately, in this iteration at least, Ping seems to have a number of major draw-backs.

Whilst users can find friends (presuming they have updated to iTunes 10) and favourite artists, post

about purchases made from within iTunes, and can recommend/like/follow any album, song or

artist you find for sale within the service, that seems to be where the functionality grinds to a halt.

Whereas most social music tools are based, to a large extent, about telling friends and followers

what you’re listening to, this is currently difficult to do within Ping. At the same time, whilst it’s

easy to be messaged by artists marked as favourites, with updates on new releases and tours, it

feels hard to connect with other music fans in any meaningful way: at present, Ping feels like it’s

been designed to allow music marketers broadcast to fans, rather than to help fans connect.

On top of this, Ping currently suffers from what is, in many ways, Apple’s greatest strength and its

greatest weakness, and that is its closed nature. Despite the fact that Facebook & Twitter both have

massive existing audiences, and are used by many other social platforms to grow their own

audiences, iTunes currently has no way to link your Ping profile with your Twitter or Facebook

account (or last.fm or MySpace for that matter).

Making it difficult for users to connect with each other, and forcing them to maintain what is, to all

intents and purposes an entirely closed social profile, doesn’t feel like the best way of helping Ping

become the default music network.

7/9/2010

Apple’s Ping: iTunes Gets Social

Things Can Only Get Better

Despite these teething problems, there a number of reasons to feel that Ping can improve, and start

to provide a meaningful service to users and advertisers.

a) Iteration: Ping has only just launched and yet it has already topped over 1 million users. If

enough of these either push for improvements in the areas we’ve covered (peer-to-peer

connections and interlinking with other networks/platforms) then it could become a truly

indispensable service for many music lovers.

Whilst Ping doesn’t currently look like snatching the niche that MySpace has carved out for

up & coming bands (iTunes mainstream heavy catalogue being the reason), or last.fm’s

default status as the modern music fan’s jukebox, iTunes’s Genius software could, if

properly socialized, become an incredibly powerful recommendation engine.

If it can act as a socially powered discovery engine it could help iTunes fight off the rise of

rival download services, powered in part by MP3 aggregators such as

CompareDownload.com which help consumers find the cheapes tracks and albums.

b) Access: The growth of Twitter has, arguably, been driven by celebrity adoption: being able

to find out what Kanye West or Lady Gaga are doing is, for many people, irresistible. Being

able to get exclusive access to their latest tracks, or discounts on tickets for upcoming

concerts, could act as the glue to help Ping keep users.

For this reason the platform could be of massive interest to music companies, whether they

be record labels or concert promoters: where Apple will face more of a challenge is in

finding a way to incorporate marketing from non-music related brands, in the way that

MySpace, last.fm, Spotify and many other have. Whether anyone would follow the Ping

profile of Automotive Brand X in order to get exclusive access to content from Pop Star Y

remains to be seen.

The End Of The Beginning

In many ways Apple’s resurgence over the past 10 years has been built on iTunes and it seems

apparent that, with sales of the iPod starting to slip, Apple is determined to ensure that it continues

to play an important role in its ongoing growth. The launch of Ping is a brave move and, in many

ways, one that is to be applauded. However, if Apple truly wishes to start a social network it may

have to become slightly more social itself.

Written by Matt Mint & Ciarán Norris