We feel pretty strongly that social networks are the key to a successful music service (if you’re not selling MP3 players that is). The store front model just doesn’t cut it for content discovery and the social networks in which we live (both real and virtual) play a key role on our consumer activity.

Last.fmSo, it’s not without trepidation that we’re starting to see more and more social network ing based music services. There are many now - Last.fm, MOG, Goombah and others. Fortunately, most have not really leveraged “social network” so much as just being a place for social networking (for a description of the difference, take a look through Danah Boyd’s great blog) around music.

We’re taking a different approach - your social network is the key to accessing new music. Not just networking around music, but the activity within that defined network is what is going to drive an increase in sales. Not the passive browsing of Last.Fm or the tagging of MOG (again, passive); although we have both of those as well. I am talking the influence of the social network, the linking between networks and getting traffic to jump between networks. In our case, we’ve incentivized the activity, and that is critical. But you have to also provide the tools to easily move between groups and identify other networks in which you want to participate. Once you do that, you can begin to analyze network data and leverage to facilitate user activity. In essence, while Social Networking is the new direction, Social Networks (and the data they create) are the killer application.

Originally published on WordPress on January 08, 2007. Migrated to this blog on May 29, 2025.