Facebook working on a music streaming service; could have an 'edge' over competitors

After Apple introduced its music streaming service to the world a few weeks ago, social media giant Facebook is reportedly working out on a music streaming service as well. To compete with Spotify, Pandora and the umpteen other streaming services we have today, looks like Facebook is ambitious about joining the digital music age too. No wonder the company has been in talks with various  music labels since last week. According to a report by MusicAlly, Facebook is already in the advanced stage of development and is partnering with a third party to launch music videos on its social network within a few months. With this strategy, Facebook plans to monetise music videos, as ‘an important stepping stone towards the on-demand audio service’, pointed out the report. Facebook’s new streaming service will take cue from YouTube. For instance, the company will pay royalties to rights holders. It is believed that Facebook will match YouTube’s royalty rates at launch time as well. However, those rates will improve once the service gains momentum. An anonymous source told MusicAlly that the service is actually, ‘way ahead of YouTube’. Facebook could launch this service as a separate app, similar to its Messenger platform. (Also read: **From Apple Music to Gaana: Music streaming is big and it’s good for the industry** ) After a number of exorbitant acquisitions, it would be no surprise if Facebook went ahead and acquired a music streaming service. However, as of now, it looks like Facebook would rather build its streaming service from scratch rather than make modifications to an acquired one. Facebook joins the streaming service wagon almost last but, could profit heavily from this strategy. At the moment, technology’s biggest corporations have invested their time and money is building their own streaming services such as Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft. According to the report, “the launch date and specifics of the business model and payout formula have yet to be nailed down.” The one advantage that Facebook has over its competitors in the streaming industry is that, Facebook has a record breaking of over one billion users at the moment. This number can match the reach of Apple Music in the industry as well. It does not need to work on an audience from scratch unlike other standalone competitors. They have the resources and a great deal of information to work around making their service, a hit!