14 DAY TRIAL // It's been a great day for music with big news from Google, MySpace and now Facebook as well. Hot on the heels of the big splash surrounding Google's unconfirmed upcoming music service, Facebook is announcing that it will start selling music as gifts in the social network's Gift Shop. Interestingly, it will partner with Lala to provide the songs, the same company with which Google is partnering in its own venture.
“You now will be able to purchase songs as gifts for your friends. The "Music and MP3s" section of the Gift Shop, powered by LaLa.com, offers over 8 million songs for any music lover from artists such as Beyonce, the Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra, Imogen Heap and even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Web songs are 1 credit each, while full, downloadable, and digital rights management-free (DRM) MP3s are 9 credits each,” Will Chen, a software engineer at Facebook, wrote.
Users will be able to buy songs and send them as gifts to their friends. The songs will be available in the new Music and MP3s section of the Gift Shop and are just the standard offering from Lala. The cheapest version will go for just 10 cents, or 1 credit, but you pretty much get what you pay for. The 10 cents will get you a “Web song,” Lala's way of saying music streaming.
The Web song will allow users to listen to a song as many times as they want online but that's pretty much it. With Spotify and a number of other services offering free streaming of any song in their catalogue, buying friends a Web song is pretty much the equivalent of sending them a Grooveshark link. Users will also have the option to buy MP3s to send as gifts and these will go for the standard 90 cents a piece. While the offering itself is nothing new, packaging it and selling it through the Gift Shop may entice a large portion of Facebook's 90 million or so US users, as the service will only be available in the States.
Along with the new music option the Facebook Gift Shop got a little freshened up. There are now six categories to choose from, Music and MP3s, Charity, Sports, Virtual Gifts, E-Cards and Real Gifts, the last one meaning actual physical gifts. The shop will also feature a new design to make it easier to navigate through the categories and through the increasing number of items for sale. The Facebook Gift Shop introduced items from third-parties a couple of months ago and since then the company has been in the process of opening it up to more outside partners.