Parmy Olson (a reporter at respected American business site Forbes.com) this week published an article claiming that Facebook were imminently going to launch a music service with Spotify. The net quickly exploded with repeats of this rumor, which to date neither Facebook or Spotify has confirmed or denied. Here’s the story so far…
August 2009
Facebook investor Li Ka-Shing buys stake in Spotify [guardian.co.uk]
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg updates his Facebook status with “Spotify is so good.” [TechCrunch]
April 2010
Spotify launches Spotify Social, with deep Facebook integration [spotify.com]
You can now connect to Facebook inside of Spotify, instantly adding all your Facebook friends who’ve selected the same feature. Your friends’ profiles will appear in a new ‘People’ sidebar at the right of the screen, with your personal profile at the top.
June 2010
Mark Zuckerberg visits London and says “The new version of Spotify is really pretty amazing… I’m using it so much more.” [TechCrunch]
July 2010
Spotify blogs “We’ve been fans of Facebook for a long time now.” [spotify.com]
October 2010
Facebook’s first president Sean Parker (who is a managing partner at Spotify investor The Founders Fund and sits on the board at Spotify) claims that “Spotify will finish the job Napster started.” [venturebeat.com]
May 25, 2011
Parmy Olson reports on Forbes: Facebook To Launch Music Service With Spotify. This is quickly picked up by all the heavyweight tech sites, including Engadget, Wired and Mashable. [forbes.com]
At the e-G8 conference in Paris, Mark Zuckerberg states that “We don’t have the DNA to be a music company or a movie company.” [gigaom.com]
At the same event, Sean Parker says “I think that there is a pretty dramatic change in the way music is monetised that is on the cusp of happening.” [ft.com]
Sophie Cazaux (PR Manager at Spotify France) and Jim Butcher (Spotify Head of Communications) reply to requests for comment with the following. [musically.com]
We have a good relationship with Facebook in that we have done an integration on Facebook Platform that has been valuable in terms of driving engagement with the Spotify service. We’re continuously working together to make the social experience on Spotify the best it can be and welcome relationships with any company looking to innovate by building more social value into the user experience.
May 26, 2011
More and more sites pick up on the story, some gently tweaking it to imply that it was an actual announcement from Facebook and Spotify. However, Mike Butcher at TechCrunch dismisses the rumor. [TechCrunch]
There’s no sign – as far as we can see – of Spotify streaming inside Facebook in the next two weeks, because there is no sign of a US launch for the music startup until it has at least two more record labels on board. And even then, a Facebook deal would be some time after that, if at all.
As the day progresses, yet more sites carry the story. Few have anything additional to add, but Hunter Skipworth at pocket-lint cheekily coins the term “Spacebook” and Andrew Orlowski at The Register spends time to consider wider implications. Duncan Geere at wired.co.uk generally agrees with TechCrunch that Spotify only has eyes for America.
Meanwhile, it’s business as usual at Spotify HQ…
