Facebook Making a Move

Facebook, the social networking explosion that took college campuses by storm a few years ago, is rumored to be getting a facelift. According to Billboard.biz, Facebook is communicating with major labels and planning meetings about the possible addition of a music service with their site.

Facebook, the social networking explosion that took college campuses by storm a few years ago, is rumored to be getting a facelift. According to Billboard.biz, Facebook is communicating with major labels and planning meetings about the possible addition of a music service with their site.

Although the details of this potential new service aren’t yet clear, sources at several major labels say meetings and negotiations of the service are to take place this week. However, these sources told Billboard.biz that they expect something parallel to the music service that MySpace has been reportedly working on.

MySpace, still the social network giant of the Internet, is said to be constructing a free ad-supported on-demand streaming service, similar to Last.fm and Imeem. This service though, would have a paid, DRM-free a la carte download option as well as a possibility of a subscription feature.

Although MySpace is the older brother in the social networking world with more than 110 million members and more than 3 million participating bands, it comes as no surprise that Facebook is nipping at their heels—or at least their ideas. For the past year, it has been rumored through various blogs and Internet buzz that Facebook would add a music application. At the end of February, the company launched its Facebook Music page, similar to the appearance of MySpace’s artist pages. This application allowed artists to create pages to profile themselves as well as stream music, add fans and purchase songs via iTunes.

There is still no timeline associated with Facebook’s newest crusade, yet the 66 million-member network has already attracted more than 16,000 developers—including iLike, Imeem, Last.fm, Pandora, Qloud and RealNetwork’s Rhapsody.

As for the impending rivalry between the two social networking behemoths, some believe it can only bring good weather for the music industry.