Facebook Music: Discographies, Tour Dates, No Blinking Backgrounds

noah | November 7, 2007 3:00 am
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The long-rumored Facebook Music platform seems to be in its nascent stages: Today I got the first e-mail asking me to visit a musician’s page on the social-networking site, which will probably be a relief to many out there as it’s superior to MySpace on aesthetic terms (lack of annoying blinky backgrounds, in-network Scrabble games), if not so great as far as privacy is concerned.

The page was for the San Francisco band Dubious Ranger; if you’re logged in, you have the chance to become a “fan” of an artist via a very hidden click on the right side of the page. Becoming a fan means you’ll get artist updates in your Facebook news feed, although I’m guessing the probability of getting to play Scrabble with said artists if they’re not busy with touring and stuff is low.

As far as the page itself, it combines the discography listings of sites like allmusic.com with standard social-networking site music offerings–concert listings, audio/video, photos, a message board–on Facebook’s clean, animated-background-free pages. (There’s also contact information for press and booking agents, although I wonder if larger acts will want to allow that much access to their nuts and bolts.) But that’s only if you’re logged in; the logged-out version, which will be seen by many more people as they click links e-mailed to them, is missing the discography, tour info, and audio/video widgets. That doesn’t sound very user-friendly to me, but then again, neither does Tila Tequila’s “music,” and look where she is now. Screenshot of the plain-Jane version is below.

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Dubious Ranger [Facebook]