One of the recent hot topics was the advent of a ‘new social network for music’ fostered by the market leader in digital music distribution, iTunes. You can now set up a profile on Ping, ‘follow’ other people or artists and get a Facebook or Twitter like activity stream of what other people are buying, rating or recommending on iTunes.
There was a lot of criticism after the launch: the service didn’t seem to be ready, was buggy etc. Moreover, only a couple of big name artists had an artist profile and it was not clear how you could get one as an artist, certainly not as an independent artist.
After a couple of weeks some issues seemed to have been tackled. If you distribute via Tunecore you can apply for an artist account and you can get Apple’s Official Guide To Creating A Ping Artist Page.
If you are an active music listener and want to act as a tastemaker for your fans to discover other good music, Ping might be a very interesting platform. Cameron Mizell wrote an article Why Every Musician Should Use iTunes Ping.
Personally I still find it difficult to find other people or artists to follow. The often discussed integration with Facebook might be an answer to that. Well, let’s experiment, wait and see.
