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Ping: Advertising Shill

By hargrove on September 1, 2010

As someone who frigging loves music, I was (overly) excited by Apple’s Ping announcement, their foray into music social networking. With 160M registered credit cards all set to 1-click purchase, that’s an impressive base for starting a social networking site. Sure, most people won’t give a shit, but out of 160M people, even if only 10% care, that’s an impressive starting base.

So I downloaded and installed iTunes 10, registered for Ping, and … wtf is this shit? Seriously? Even the most optimistic fan would have to classify this as nothing more than promotional shill.

Ping. Advertising shill. It’s not what I what I wanted to see but I got a face-full of it.

Here’s a list of iTunes “recommendations” which are hugely wtf. Those with NO listed beside them are artists I do not like and have no idea why iTunes is recommending to me:

  • Lady Gaga NO
  • Yo-Yo Ma
  • Katy Perry NO
  • U2 NO
  • Jack Johnson
  • Linkin Park
  • Shakira NO
  • Coldplay NO
  • Mark Ronson NO
  • Taylor Swift NO
  • Linkin Park AGAIN
  • Dave Matthews Band NO
  • Diddy NO
  • U2 AGAIN NO

That’s a recommendation score of 3 out of 14, which leads me to believe the initial recommendations are bullshit, based on nothing more than record label contributions to Apple’s advertising campaign. I checked and, yes, Genius is turned on, so these recommendations apparently have no relation to Genius. What they’re related to, I have no idea. NONE.

As an aside, am I the only one who thought Lady Gaga was overly represented at the event yesterday? Seriously? Because I never figured Jobs to be a Lady Gaga fan. But we all by-god sat through her video and her name was on almost every screenshot. She was everywhere.

So, I figured so what?, right? iTunes has a search feature. I can just search and follow my favorites, right?

Not so fast there, skippy.

Here’s a list of artists I dig who don’t have “Follow” links:

  • Clapton, Eric
  • Cooper, Alice
  • Disturbed
  • Drowning Pool
  • Flying Burrito Brothers
  • Flyleaf
  • Godsmack
  • Leadbelly
  • KISS
  • Korn
  • Marilyn Manson
  • Owens, Buck
  • Parsons, Gram
  • Strait, George
  • Train

At present, it’s not possible for me to follow any of these artists. I’ve tried to keep the list genre-neutral, but it’s slightly metal-positive. But really? Leadbelly? He should be a given in any sane system.

So it looks like Ping is akin to many of Google’s products: not ready for prime-time, but pushed forward just the same. Hopefully we’ll see some progress in the near — if not immediate — future, otherwise Ping will be nothing more than a pebble in the ocean … a small splash that no one cares about.

Posted in , | Tagged , , , | 3 Responses

  • Anonymous

    To be fair, the artists have to join the network just like us users. Just like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc… If that artist isn’t on the social media site, you can’t follow them or be a fan.

    I suspect over the next few months, more and more groups will add themselves to Ping so that they can start promoting their content just like Lady GaGa. :)

    At any rate, I’m way more interested in following friends that I know have similar taste in music as myself. Once I am sure that it’s safe to use with Jailbroken iPhones, I’ll join and hook up with those folks. I’m sure at least one of them has an iPod. Whether they use iTunes or some other music organization software is yet to be seen.

  • Anonymous

    I understand what you’re saying and it makes sense, but it’s far more likely that someone on Lady GaGa’s staff is updating her Ping activity. I don’t see Alice Cooper sitting around doing that. He’s more interested in touring and making music than updating his Ping profile.

    And what about people such as Leadbelly, Gram Parsons, and Buck Owens? You know, dead people? There has to be (or needs to be) a way to follow updates for these artists.

    It seems like Apple would’ve had more artists on board before rolling this out and, given the artists who are on board, it strikes me as more promotional than social.

  • Anonymous

    As far as Lady GaGa posting to Ping or a staff member. Don’t be so sure about a staff member. There are a lot of artists/actors/celeb’s posting to Twitter these days. If it’s quick and easy and they have easy access… Ping being in iTunes on an iPhone possibly makes posting pretty easy.

    Now, the program here is that there are more and more social networking sites popping up all the time. Will Lady GaGa post to both Twitter and Ping and Facebook and etc… Probably not.

    Its very likely that Apple approached the artists they are currently recommending asking them to participate. They updated the artists iPhones with the iOS 4.1 and their computers with iTunes 10 to get them started.

    Since iTunes is pretty much the biggest music store in the world, its very likely that every artist will hop on to Ping as time progresses. They would be very foolish not to. It’s like Best Buy and/or WalMart saying that they will whisper into all their customers ears what the artists want for free. All the artists have to do is sell their music at their stores.