Appearently, you start by giving away free legal music. As we reported on Tuesday, Facebook in a promotion with iTunes will involve giving away 10 million free music samplers. Each sample compilation includes 25 songs and focuses on a different music genre - Alternative, Rock, Hip-Hop, Dance and Electronica.

The iTunes deal tells us something about in what direction Facebook is going. MySpace has become the place on the Internet to market music and break new bands. Facebook wants to make sure that all bands that are on MySpace will also be on Facebook.

"We're always striving to provide people with the things they care most about, and with over half a million bands listed on Facebook we know that listening to and downloading music is an integral part of our users' lives, “ says Owen Van Natta, chief operating officer at Facebook.

My Take: Young people do not sign up for Facebook just to get free iTunes downloads. If they do, they are perhaps not the most desirable audience for a social network and their advertisers. People like myself go on MySpace to find out about cool unsigned bands that you can’t get on iTunes yet. I go there to look up a band that is playing this weekend at a local venue to see if it is worth checking them out. I go there to look at what my friends recommend listening to as well.

MySpace and Facebook have already become a natural way for bands to promote their music and interact with their fans. For example, The Detroit News is currently hosting a website where readers can listen to unsigned bands and vote on which ones they like. The top nine bands to emerge from a field of 20 to advance to the semifinals in The Detroit News Sonic Summer Battle of the Bands.

"I think it's great and exciting," says Jae Stevens of Jae Stevens Live, which will play Showcase No. 3 at Clutch Cargo's in Pontiac on Aug. 24, to The Detroit Times. "We sent out a bunch of e-mails and posted on Myspace.com and Facebook.com, and we're totally grateful to all the people who voted for us."

So iTunes give-aways are great and all, but nothing that will make Facebook explode in terms of numbers of new users. So what more can Facebook do to catch up with MySpace in terms of music? The answer is a lot. In terms of image, Myspace is for teeny-boppers and Facebook more college-oriented. So, how do you make that work to your advantage? Facebook saw its visitors drop 2 percent in June to 13.8 million, after an average monthly growth of 3 percent, according to ComScore Media Matrix. Nielsen/Netratings reported a little better numbers, showing that Facebook's audience grew 3 percent in June, but that still has to be compared to a 10 percent average monthly gain in 2006. Young college students are no longer content to be passive recipients of pre-programmed song lists by iTunes. I’m sure that they will take them if they are free, but Facebook needs to think a little more out of the box long term.

The advertising community and the media industry are currently struggling to come to terms with the switch from a "push" to a "pull" media model. In other words, this assertive generation is watching what it wants, when it wants, where it wants. I think Facebook will have to work up a more unique solution for personalizing your homepage with the ability to easily show, edit and share music and videos in tune with all the new possibilities that “Web 2.0” allows. I think that the more advanced functions will go over well with the college-crowd that may think that they have outgrown MySpace. That will give Facebook a true competitive advantage over MySpace. Not just giving away a bunch of free songs.

Related Links:
http://www.detnews.com/entertainment/sonicsummer/index.htm
http://www.myspace.com
http://www.facebook.com