Social networking giant Facebook, Inc. has continued its ongoing push to keep users on the site with a new service that delivers inline music support.

Called “Music Stories,” the new feature allows users to embed a 30 second preview of a shared song or album they wish to share from either Apple Music or Spotify AG; friends are then able to sample the song or album via Facebook’s new audio player without having to leave Facebook, or the need to have an account on either service.

Users who like the music are then able to purchase the track, or save it should they have a streaming account; although Facebook doesn’t specifically mention it, it’s likely that they have a deal with both that would see them getting a cut (affiliate commission) on any sales users make.

The partnership with Spotify isn’t a new one for Facebook, who announced a deal back in 2011 that saw Spotify music shared on Facebook but with users forced to then go back to Spotify itself to listen to the track, whereas with this new deal Facebook keeps those eyeballs at least for those who don’t want to listen to an entire track.

“There are few things people love more than music. People find out about it from artists and friends alike, and they love to share their discoveries. Today we are enabling better music discovery and sharing on Facebook,” Facebook’s Director of Product Michael Cerda said in a post on the official Facebook blog.

“We hope by making this experience better, artists will share more, friends will share and engage more, and music will become a better part of the Facebook experience overall.”

Second choice

The announcement follows reports back in July this year that Facebook itself was looking at launching its own streaming service and had been in talks with major record companies to do so; given nothing more has been heard about those talks since and instead we see this deal today suggests that for whatever reason Facebook has been forced to go with a second choice versus what it really wanted to do.

Music Share in and of itself though isn’t a bad product and will definitely assist in keeping people on their Facebook timelines versus exiting to third party sites, but there’s one serious, dare we say pathetic flaw in the offering: it’s only being made available for iOS users with no mention at all of any intention to bring it to Android or the desktop.

Facebook engineers need to get out of the bubble they live in and get a grip on basic concepts such as the fact Android has a 78 percent market share and snubbing Android users does nothing to endear itself to the majority of people.

Image credit: Facebook