Apple's Ping doesn’t sing – yet

15 November 2010

by Eamon Ford

Apple’s music-centric network Ping, which launched amid inevitable hype at the start of September, has signed up 2,000 acts to create social profiles within iTunes.

That’s a sign-up rate of less than 1,000 acts a month which, given iTunes’ sheer dominance in digital music, suggests Apple’s first significant stumble in over a decade.

It started badly for Apple, with Facebook shutting off integration just before Ping’s launch amid rumours of talks that lasted over a year coming to a bitter impasse.

User reviews were immediately negative, with few even coming close to suggesting this is a game-changer in social networking. The fact that it is embedded within the iTunes client makes it slightly cumbersome to use and the mobile functionality (via the iTunes app for iPhone) is severely limited compared to the desktop version.

While 2,000 acts may have signed up, a closer look at their pages suggests that the artistic community is equally nonplussed by the service and unenthusiastic about what it does or why it’s there.

Major acts like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, U2 and Shakira were there at launch, but there is a real sense that acts are signing up under duress. It is also painfully apparent they are not putting the same effort into Ping as they do on their Twitter, Facebook and (yes, really) Myspace accounts. Apple says Ping is by “invite only”, but if it wants to be a mainstream proposition, it really needs to start recruiting and, more than that, encourage acts to engage fully and properly with it.

Radiohead, for example, have an official page with 97,631 followers and have still to post a single update. That’s Radiohead – arguably the most digitally savvy band on the planet. Shakira is active (with over 225,000 followers), but that activity is primarily focused on record releases and public appearances.

Take That, who broke UK box office records for their 2011 tour and whose reunion album with Robbie Williams (Progress) is expected to be the year’s biggest seller, have used their Ping page to, well, get fans to order tickets for their tour or pre-order their album. Like Shakira, they see it as little more than a sales platform.

It’s not all negative, however. Basement Jaxx (11,103 followers) at least seem to be getting the hang of it, posting tracks and albums they like on a regular basis. Lady Gaga is leading the pack in terms of followers (587,474) and activity, treating it as a genuine social network.

But the problem is that Gaga (as always) is the exception rather than the rule and this cannot deflect from the fact that Ping is, in its current Facebook-free incarnation, a textbook example of too much effort for very little return.