You've no doubt already heard about the drama between Facebook and Apple when Apple introduced Ping on September 1. Well, the drama doesn’t end there. A new report sheds light on Cupertino effectively leaving the record labels out in the cold prior to the launch of iTunes 10.
Fast Company is reporting on the troubled launch of Ping, Apples new social network service built into iTunes 10 which was introduced in September. Almost immediately, Ping was mired in drama -- first with Facebook and next by users, who so far have been mostly unimpressed with the service and its poor selection of artists.
If you thought you were unimpressed, the record labels appear to be even more so according to some music industry insiders. “It’s not a game changer,” explained one source, who claimed the record labels are “indifferent” to the iTunes-based social network.
Of course, that could have a lot to do with being given little or no notice leading up to the unveiling of Ping. While Facebook reportedly had 18 months of negotiation, record labels had none -- apparently, they found out about Ping at the same time the we all did.
"In keeping with their general practice of keeping things really, really tight, [Apple] didn't tell anyone about Ping," the source revealed. "I'd say that you had a few annoyed people."
Apple sidestepped the often difficult record labels and “went straight to management,” schmoozing up with artists such as Lady Gaga and Jack Johnson in order to get their profiles on Ping for launch day. Now it appears to be taking forever to get additional artists added to the service, particularly for independents -- a situation that may not improve very quickly in the short term, as Apple is creating profiles for musicians one at a time.
“Apple needs to manually create each page on their end, send us the login and then we populate it,” told the music industry source.
Oh dear.
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