iTunes gets social, launches Ping social music discovery service

By on Sep 1, 2010 at 1:53 PM
General September 1, 2010

Today, Apple announced that iTunes 10 would be getting a new icon and new social feature called Ping. Ping was described by Apple’s CEO as “Twitter and Facebook meets iTunes.” The new Ping feature allows you to create a virtual group of friends, within iTunes, who you can share music likes, dislikes, and recommendations with. Ping will alert you of nearby concerts, new tracks discovered by friends, and items posted by friends. The Ping service will be available on the iPhone and iPod Touch as well and will be included in the Music Store app. iTunes 10 will be available for download starting today.

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24 Comments

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  • Al Chablis

    *yawn* Ping? Isn’t that what you hear in your submarine before getting hit by a torpedo and get sunk to the bottom of the ocean? I see Ping sharing the same fate as Myspace music. No users, no unique content, no future.

  • El Oscuro Secreto

    I am an Apple fan but this is a major fail.

  • PAPINYC

    Ping, Bing, Chaching. Wow, and they criticize other companies that “knock-off” their products.
    They could’ve just posted this on crApple.com; no need for a full press conference. Oh wait, I forget, Steve iJobs os GOD !

  • Max

    Apple is branding.. expanding.. what is a failure? Its just more features for the already incredibly successful iTunes.. they’re just dominating the market.. these new devices are going to sell like hotcakes…

    • El Oscuro Secreto

      Ping is the failure, the other products are fine.

    • El Oscuro Secreto

      The topic is “iTunes gets social, launches Ping social music discovery service”, not all products that were covered.

  • jonathan t

    Love apple stuff, but this is new territory for apple and I really don’t think there is a big demand for social music networking as of now. Updating my Itunes anyway to Itunes 10.

  • Ed G

    Ping.fm must have been pissed when they found out Apple invented it.

  • dantagonist

    does it suck less on windows?

    also, why does apple insist on requiring me to download the entire application again? Can’t there be a simpler upgrade process that doesn’t require a huge install, then ‘reimporting’ my library? an application upgrade shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, but like clockwork, itunes always takes much longer. bullocks!

  • Len

    Sounds like Steve ran out of things to say and needed to do something which his products are very good at… killing time.

    Honestly, this is a pretty lame announcement.

  • FRESHPRINCE

    ping sounds a like cool thing one thing i admire about apple is that they make everything so simple and easy to use not alot set up required.

  • T Man

    Doesn’t the much derided Zune have this feature already? In fact, i think they call it Zune Social. I hope this wasn’t why they bought lala.com.

  • Austin Grace

    did they make the damn thing faster? i sware, it feels like a million years for itunes to do certain things. and i’m using a fast computer :) . and this ping thing sounds interesting. so, wonder if ping.fm is gonna pull a lawsuit? hmmmm we’ll see.

  • Canela67

    PING? WTH! PING-BING! Why do people dont realize that Apple copies everything that Microsoft does? The only difference is that Apple makes it better, simpler & cooler!

  • MW

    Is’nt iTunes bloated enough as it is?

  • SKI

    Ping makes pretty good golf clubs.

    Oh wait, that should be a pretty good lawsuit.

  • mykie

    Ping? Meet Bing! Bing? Meet Ping!

    Ping, Bing. Bing, Ping.

    PingBingPingBingPingBingPingBing!

  • MadSkillz

    Honestly Ping is sorta what MySpace music should have evolved into.

    I don’t think Apple expects this Ping to eclipse facebook or Twitter, but more so to compliment. Plus if you are a person that uses iTunes a lot, it aimed at you. Apple sells more music than digital music than anybody so if you put a businessman cap on you see this being another way to market and connect users to the artists as well.

    For the short time I have been posting on heres I’ve had a question. Why are BGR readers so damn anti-Apple. Am I missing something. I mean even in non-Apple articles people bitching all the time.

    • Jarrett

      People want everyone to see their point of view as important. In this case their choice of product. That choice of product is not Apple branded and they have their reasons for that. Apple’s growth on all fronts pisses these people of because they see their point of view as exact and everyone else should agree. Everyday Apple is attracting new users and everyone anti-Apple can not figure this out, so they vent and vent and rage and vent some more.
      It’s actually quite fun to come to this site and see on a daily basis. Hell, I bet I read the comments more than I read the articles. That last part is as sad as it is true.

  • Joe

    Why are his hands down his pants?

  • Steve Gates

    Welcome to the Social!

  • http://heavygunblog.com dj btam

    why is apple requiring me to download the entire application again? No upgrade option? WTF!

  • lurch

    Steve Jobs looks like Skeletor.

  • http://www.psonar.com/ Richard Urwin

    I don’t think Apple will be adding streaming to iTunes anytime soon. Ex-Lala users will also remain sorely disappointed. Here’s a blog post about why:

    http://blog.psonar.com/2010/09/03/ex-lala-users-think-again/

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