Facebook adds music sharing feature, total Spotify plays, top videos and more to artists' pages

Some artists’ Facebook pages now include an option for fans to search for and share Spotify links to their favorite songs, as well as a way for users to see which songs, videos and news stories related to an artist are trending on the social network. When users visit an artist’s page, they can click “music” from the publisher and search for a song by that artist. A link to Spotify will appear and users can say something about the link before posting it publicly to the page. This seems aimed at helping fans express themselves to their favorite artists, as many users often post links to YouTube videos of an artist’s songs to show their support. The new feature makes it easier for users to reference a particular song, while encouraging use of Spotify over YouTube. Ultimately, the feature could search across Vevo and other Facebook-connected services besides Spotify. For now this option is available on pages that are linked with a Spotify artist and that allow fans to post on the page. For example, pages for Rihanna and Eminem do not allow fans to write on their Wall so there is no option to share music either. Some users have also seen the music feature above News Feed, allowing them to easily share songs with friends. Another feature we recently noticed on artist pages is a module that includes the number of total Spotify plays for five of an artist’s most popular songs. When users first visit an artist page, they will see which songs are popular among their friends, but when filtering Timeline by “posts by others,” they will see total plays among all users. In that same "posts by others" view are modules showing the top videos and top articles about an artist. This information is pulled from Open Graph-enabled apps like Vevo, Viddy, Yahoo and Washington Post Social Reader. These modules are interesting for people who visit the page, but they could also be useful for artists to understand which channels their fans -- or potential fans -- are most active on. [Update 7/10/12 2:50 p.m. PT - These video and news modules are also available on fan pages for brands, public figures and other entities on Facebook.] [Update 7/10/12 4:49 p.m. PT - Facebook engineer Alejandro Marcu, who works on pages, tells us these modules were added to pages on June. 15.] Facebook pages are becoming increasingly rich destinations for artists to connect with fans and for users to discover new music. In April, Facebook added a listen button to artist pages, allowing users to get an instant sample of an artist’s music. With Timeline, artists can tell their story dating back before Facebook, making these pages useful for sharing an artist's discography and important biographical events. Facebook pages could be an even stronger hub for artists if they also included modules about popular shows or concerts featuring that artist. This module could pull information from Facebook events, Ticketmaster, StubHub and other ticketing services that integrate Open Graph. Users should be able to see which shows their friends had been to, as well as which events were most popular overall.

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Facebook adds music sharing feature, total Spotify plays, top videos and more to artists' pages

Brittany Darwell

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Brittany Darwell