Why One Critical Flaw Will Stop Apple Ping From Hugely Increasing Sales

Apple Ping, the latest addition to the iTunes Store, is set to greatly increase music sales – but one critical flaw can stop that from happening.

Ping, the music social network for the iTunes Store introduced during Apple’s latest September music event, is supposed to increase music sales. You see what your friends and people you follow are listening to and recommending, and you buy those tunes because you trust their taste. But one critical flaw seems like it’ll stop Apple Ping from hugely increasing sales: Ping only lives in the iTunes Store.

How much time do you spend hanging out in the iTunes Store? How many people do you know that spend a lot of time there? For most people, the iTunes Store is like Best Buy or any other store – you come in, get what you need, and get out.

By limiting Ping to the confines of the iTunes Store, Apple is severely limiting where people are able to buy the music recommended by their friends and folks they follow. If Apple wants Ping to really take off sales-wise, they’ll open it up to the web.

All that needs to be done is for Apple to offer an embed-able widget for Ping. Users can then embed their latest purchases, recommendations, and top 10 lists on their websites, where people do actually hang out.

It’s no different from how Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, and even specialty music stores like Beatport have offered embeddable widgets.

Music sales can especially increase on the websites of influential music bloggers and music publications like Pitchfork, where a lot of eager music fans visit to get their latest music recommendations.

With an embed-able Ping widget in place, you can go to the websites, see the latest recommended tune that you like, click on a “buy” link and it’ll take you to the iTunes Store where you can purchase it.

So Apple, consider this a ping to open Ping up. You win, the artists and labels win, and music fans win.

  • Reply
    inspirationfeed
    September 12, 2010 at 5:23 am

    “Its social networking for music,” lol. I love the idea, but Ping has alot of fixing to do. What if i want to follow small bands, and not lady gaga.Last.fm is already doing an amazing job at this. Apple if you want to compete, you need to come at full force and provide features and settings that Last.fm doesn’t.

  • Reply
    Antonio Lupetti
    September 12, 2010 at 5:28 am

    I think Ping is very slow and totally “unsocial”… it’s frustrating.

  • Reply
    Rohan
    September 12, 2010 at 5:45 am

    Absolutely. Limiting Ping to the iTunes Store can be a big turn-off. In India, very few people use services like iTunes Store for music. I don’t expect Ping to be explosively successful neither in India nor other countries. Yes, Antonio stated correctly in his tweets –> Ping is so “un”social…

  • Reply
    Michael A. Vickers
    September 12, 2010 at 5:47 am

    How about just opening it up within the rest of iTunes? In order to “like” something in your library you have to click the link next to the album and hop into the iTunes store and then click the “like” button.

  • Reply
    shaun dobson
    September 12, 2010 at 1:57 pm

    amongst my friends and colleagues and from the various websites and blogs ive been reading ive yet to find anyone who likes ping… im finding lots of fans of spotify but thanks to apple and ping ive found a service called mflow that seems to have been doing what ping is trying to … i find people i want to follow and they suggest music to me and i can listen to that music..which is pretty cool i think..

  • Reply
    John
    September 12, 2010 at 7:44 pm

    I’m not into Ping but gee whiz. It’s only been out for about a week or so. If you look at the history of other Apple products you see them following a disciplined growth path. It won’t happen next week but Apple will keep tweaking Ping and adding features to make it more useful.

  • Reply
    Carlos Takemura
    September 12, 2010 at 11:22 pm

    Your argument is slightly flawed itself, most people do not have their own websites! Agree though, they need to open it up to the web, and if we’re talking social then perhaps Facebook might be the answer. Most ordinary people have Facebook pages, rather than their own websites.

  • Reply
    Steve
    September 13, 2010 at 5:47 am

    Ya apple really dropped the ball on this. Your point is a good one but the even bigger one I think is that ping is only available for major record labels, small artist cannot make a ping account. Thats the killer. Like a haven’t heard about U2 and Lady Gaga enuf already. Seeing 5 of my friends “like” a major lable band is hardly boing to make me check out someone who I already know about and have heard 1000 times.

  • Reply
    kOoLiNuS
    September 16, 2010 at 7:22 am

    Also the Store content isn’t the same all over the world so, for example, my pal in Taiwan can’t download (or lister a preview) of a strong-in-the-market italian singer … so the “exchange” of music tastes and likes is seriously put in danger.

    Probably it should have been better if they’d buy a platform like Last.fm and invest into and develop it …