NEW YORK: Facebook is building its own music streaming service which could rival the likes of Spotify, Tidal and Apple Music.
According to music and technology news website Music Ally, Facebook’s current plans to monetise music videos on its site “are an important stepping stone towards the on-demand audio service”.
The site is already known to be planning to host music videos on its site, and will pay the same per-stream as YouTube.
But Music Ally reports that it’s just the first step of Facebook’s plan to enter the lucrative music streaming field.
Almost of quarter of worldwide digital revenue comes from subscription streams, while 9% comes from ad-supported streams.
Music Ally quoted an unnamed source as saying: “It’s a mass land grab. Facebook going into the video space was always going to be an enormous, ambitious land grab and no doubt something they’ve been planning for some time as the potential income from ad revenue will be incredible.”
Spotify has been the dominant player in the music streaming industry for several years, picking up 15 million paying premium customers, and 45 million users of its free tier.
Jay Z launched Tidal as a rival service earlier this year, but with higher prices it still has not taken off in the same way as Spotify.
Then in June Apple launched its own music streaming service, with a three-month free trial for new users but no free ad-supported tier like Spotify.
