Report: Facebook, Spotify team on music outside U.S.
Forbes reports that the two companies are creating a new service that will be offered to Facebook. Spotify, however, is still without licenses to operate stateside.
Facebook and Spotify are creating a new music service that will be offered to the social network's users in countries other than the United States, according to Forbes.
Spotify is still without the necessary licenses to operate in this country after trying to make the move for nearly two years, music industry sources told CNET.
Forbes reported that in perhaps as soon as two weeks, Facebook users could see a Spotify icon on their news feed. Upon clicking the icon, the new service's software will be installed on a user's desktop.
The software will then run in the background and enable users to access Spotify's music library.
Spotify, a hit European streaming music service, has has yet to convince all the labels to license the company for the U.S. market. The company seems to have plenty going for it: Sean Parker, one of the founders of iconic file-sharing service Napster, is an adviser and investor. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was wowed enough by Spotify in 2009 to note on his Facebook status: "Spotify is so good."
One has to wonder how big a role Parker may have played in any partnership with Facebook. Parker was an adviser to Zuckerberg, a relationship that was chronicled (or fictionalized) in the hit film "The Social Network."
In an e-mail to CNET, Spotify spokesman Jim Butcher did not discuss the Forbes report.
"We've a good relationship with Facebook in that we have an integration" on the Facebook platform, Butcher wrote. "We're continuously working together to make the social experience on Spotify the best it can be."