I was wondering if anyone had found or thought of ways artists can use PING to market to new fans (outside of the obvious)? Any great marketing strategies or success stories people have heard of by leveraging PING or has its inherent exclusivity limited these opportunities?

Facebook has been trying to monetize the music interests of its members. Apple is just adding some socialization amongst its already lucrative membership. They had hoped to include Facebook, but Facebook’s terms were too onerous.

So they try it themselves… the joy of free enterprise is it will work or die on it’s own merits.

Also, iTunes already has a userbase of millions – it’s not like they’re starting cold.

That aside, what blows me away about Ping is how unfinished, how unpolished it is. There’s nothing to do there, and limitations everywhere. It simply was not ready for release, and that’s not very Apple-like. They’re known for new products that emerge from the gate with fit and finish, lots of polish. Ping feels like it needed a few more months of development time. This seemed like something Google would do, e.g. “Here’s our beta product – go play.”

This is an attempt to take one more step back up Apple’s vertical integration in the music industry. They already have distribution and consumption tied up with iTunes and iPod and now they’re trying to tie up promotion/discovery as well with Ping.

Only iTunes users can use Ping, only iPod users can use iTunes etc. Not to mention only artists on iTunes can be ‘discovered’ on Ping.

This is a threat to diversity and discovery, not a means of unlocking them.