Mobile media company ParkVu is today introducing a new Facebook application called Music WithMe which publishes your iTunes music library to Facebook where the tracks it contains can be shared, liked, commented on and discussed among your friends.
The app, which also requires a desktop software download (currently Windows-only, Mac coming soon), connects your iTunes music library to Facebook and then continually syncs changes as you purchase and add new music.
Specifically, the app publishes your top 25 most played tracks, your top rated tracks, those recently added and those recently played. After installing the desktop component, launching it and also authorizing the Facebook application (whew!), the app will display those tracks via its Facebook application at http://apps.facebook.com/musicwithme.
But in order for your friends to like and comment on these items, they too have to install the app. This requires the usual friend-spamming tactics most of us have put behind us as of late. (Invite your friends to try Music WithMe! Ugh.)
Issues, Errors and Complaints
The application installation, in our tests, didn’t go as smoothly as it should have. After installing the app, it doesn’t immediately run and/or hide itself to the system tray. You actually have to go seek it out from the Start Menu and manually launch it, entering in the same username and password combination you provided the Facebook application. Even after it had started, visiting the app’s page only showed a “Runtime Error” message at first (Server Error in ‘/’ Application, it says). We’re not sure if it just needed a few minutest to get going or if it required iTunes to be launched before it could sync, but the app eventually worked.
Without friend participation, however, Music WithMe is somewhat useless to the person installing it. There’s no way to, say, take a track from your own list and post it to your Facebook Wall or a friend’s Wall, alongside a message like “this song rocks rocks!”, for instance. That would be a handy feature for an app billed as a way to socialize around your iTunes music.
It would also be nice if the application’s page showed which tracks were being shared the most among its users, perhaps even going so far as to allow you to like and comment on those items as well.
Music WithMe is in beta at present so there’s still time for it to improve, but for now, it leaves a lot to be desired.
On the other hand, music streaming site Pandora’s implementation of Facebook’s “Instantly Personalized” feature is a better alternative for socializing around music, we think. Although some – including U.S. senators and EU regulators – feel that such a feature violates Facebook users’ privacy, the end result is a better overall experience. Without having to do a thing, Facebook users who haven’t opted out of this data-sharing behavior can immediately see, upon login to Pandora.com, what music their Facebook friends like. They can also like and comment on a particular band via Facebook’s “like” button, or just comment directly on the site.
Music WithMe needs to offer more features if it wants to compete with this type of seamless social interaction, especially given its somewhat cumbersome installation process. The result needs to be worth your while. Right now, we can’t say that it is.
