Is a Facebook music service launching in September?
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Facebook may be planning to launch an online music service of its own at its F8 developer conference on Sept. 22.
Jon Fortt, a technology reporter for CNBC, said Wednesday morning on the show ‘Fast Money Halftime Report’ that Facebook would enter the increasingly competitive market for online music at F8, which will be held in San Francisco.
‘Next month is going to be a big one for music,’ Fortt said on CNBC. ‘I’m hearing from someone familiar with the plans that Facebook plans to launch its long-rumored music service at the F8 conference on Sept. 22nd. Now, it seems likely that Facebook won’t actually host the music, but will partner with others who do that.’
Facebook officials weren’t available Wednesday to comment on the CNBC report.
Fortt also elaborated in a blog post on CNBC’s website, stating that ‘Facebook has not been negotiating to actually become a music retailer itself; instead, it may be creating an environment where third-party music services such as Pandora, Spotify, MOG and others can offer their wares.’
If Facebook does as Fortt is reporting, it would create a platform for services such as Pandora, Spotify and MOG to reach more users, given that Facebook has about 750 million users. Such a move would pit Facebook in even greater competition with a growing rival -- Google, which launched its Google Music Beta software in May.
Google Music Beta allows users to upload songs they already own into the cloud so they can play music back over Internet streaming. Amazon’s Cloud Player offers a similar service to Google Music Beta, but Amazon sells music online as well.
Apple’s iCloud offers iTunes Match which gives users the ability to save songs to the cloud and download songs from the cloud, and iTunes is home to the most popular music storefront on the Web.
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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles