Here is a post I sent to the Pho-List, a semi-private mailing list for people in/interested in the digital music space. As Ping & Apple is of wider interest than just industry types I am posting my seven questions/ideas here on my blog. I welcome your feedback, answers or further suggestions.
I think the really interesting stuff will be when we learn whether additional parties will be able to participate in Ping or on the Apple TV.
A few examples to illustrate what I mean.
1) will ticket services that are not Livenation/ticketmaster be able to work with Ping? If so musicians and fans win. If not Ping will lack smaller venues and any major shows not at Livenation venues.
2) will services such as the BBC’s iPlayer (which they have made some announcements about offering outside of the UK – and slight hints that even non-UK citizens might have a means of paying for access) or similar streaming services from other global networks integrate with the Apple TV? As a US based fan of Doctor Who if this allowed me to legally view HD Doctor Who (and other BBC series) I would buy the Apple TV & pay a monthly subscription in a heartbeat. (BBC America isn’t available in HD on Comcast here in SF)
3) Will artists have a means of offering full streams of select tracks or full videos on their Ping pages as they already do on MySpace Music and on their own websites.
4) a Facebook friends invite feature was announced for Ping but will this integration be deeper? (ie linking/using music, tv and film “likes” on Facebook; connecting a facebook fan page to the musician’s ping profile etc) and will other networks also be connected to (for example will there be a myspace integration)
5) will there be an API to allow developers to build tools to help musicians and/or labels manage their Ping presence? Will this allow for cross promotion of more than just livenation venue event tickets? For example – merch, physical music such as LP’s, fan clubs, kickstarter like pre-sale offers for new works, iPhone/iPad applications etc. Will an artist be able to cross-promote for example linking to TV series or films using the artists work (or in some cases where the artist is acting)
6) how well integrated will individual artists and the group(s) they perform with be on Ping? I don’t know if there is an easy answer but countless artists across all genres perform with different groups – a fan of the artist or one group should, you would think, have an easy way to discover these other groups.
7) will Ping and iTunes more broadly better support musical genres currently poorly represented on iTunes. Personally I’m thinking about Opera and a classical music – genres where iTunes has limited offerings. But there is a wider global array of genres and regions where iTunes (at least in the US) carries few artists.
Searching for the Moon 