Bon Jovi is better with friends.
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Facebook is widely expected to be announcing a music service next week in partnership with Spotify, Rdio, and perhaps some other music services like MOG.
One interesting possibility that hasn’t been mentioned: Facebook might integrate concert ticket buying into the service.
Some interesting datapoints:
- About a month ago, Facebook games director Sean Ryan told us that Facebook is very interested in e-commerce, and specifically mentioned concert ticketing as an example. A couple weeks later, Ticketmaster introduced a feature that let you see where your Facebook friends are sitting on Ticketmaster’s interactive seating maps.
- Facebook is reportedly planning an HTML5-based mobile app platform with integrated payments. Users would be able to buy goods from within Facebook apps on any mobile phone with a modern Web browser.
But what about smaller acts playing bars or clubs that don’t use Ticketmaster? You know — all those bands who used to love MySpace before it collapsed.
Enter a startup called MogoTix, which Facebook is using to handle ticketing for its f8 conference next week. This is a switch — in previous years, it’s used Eventbrite (which also handles ticketing for a lot of other tech events in Silicon Valley).
When I asked MogoTix CEO Scott Thorpe how he got the deal, he simply said that Facebook was “very interested” in their technology, which lets buyers and sellers use their mobile phones to handle all ticketing — customers get tickets sent to their phones as little electronic codes, and ticket takers at the venue can scan those codes using THEIR phones. No paper, no dedicated readers.
Thorpe also said he’d be very happy if smaller bands used MogoTix to sell tickets and book tours directly — without the participation of the venues.
Could Facebook be helping push the company in this direction? He wouldn’t comment.
So this is just speculation at this point, but social ticket buying would give users another reason to use a Facebook music service, rather than just sticking with the individual listening-only services (like Spotify) that will be part of it.
Article source: SAI http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~3/AxgkkanU770/could-facebooks-music-service-include-concert-ticketing-2011-9