Lets face it: About $1 per song is too expensive and in-fact paying per song is a model that won’t work for social network about music - Ping.
Reason: So much of music listening via “social networks” is discovering what your friends listening and taking their recommendations. Generally, I don’t want to pay a buck to hear those songs, but I am happy to do it for $10 monthly fee (Like Spotify Premium).
Biggest music battle is still to come: Apple bought Lala and closed it down, so clearly that team is now working on streaming version of iTunes. Zuckerberg has said that “Spotify is awesome” and it’s UI and integration to Facebook in Europe are much better than iTunes/Ping/Facebook. So, for US market, I bet there is something going on with Spotify+Facebook+Facebook Credits. Facebook has to do some sort arrangement with 30% commission of Credits as the margins on music might not be good enough for such a big percentage, but I am sure some adjusting has been done already for Zynga, etc. Also, we shouldn’t count Google out - They activate 200,000 “music devices” everyday now, so it is pretty natural to build something around that…maybe a Music Market Place?
Meanwhile, here in Pasadena, I have my Good Charlotte channel on on my Pandora and life is pretty OK.
