September 1, 2010: Apple’s new music-focused social community, Ping, ships as a part of iTunes 10. Apple says the service will let customers uncover new music and extra simply comply with their favourite artists.
Ping racks up 1 million signups within the first 48 hours. Nonetheless, Apple’s social community is doomed from the beginning.
Ping: Apple launches music social community
Apple beforehand dabbled in social networking (it was the primary vital tech firm to promote on Fb). However Ping was Apple’s first try at really launching its personal social community.
Apart from following artists, Ping let customers submit ideas and opinions. Anybody might share particulars about favourite albums and songs. Plus, they might view live performance listings and inform mates about upcoming reveals they deliberate to attend.
“iTunes is the primary music neighborhood on the planet, with over 160 million iTunes customers in 23 nations, and now we’re including social networking with Ping,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs mentioned in a press launch. “With Ping you possibly can comply with your favourite artists and mates and be part of a worldwide dialog with music’s most passionate followers.”
In some methods, Apple appeared completely poised to launch a music-focused social community. The corporate projected a cool, youthful picture. Plus, it benefited from brand-loyal clients, vast attain, good standing within the music neighborhood and — due to its success with iTunes and the iPod — a historical past of delivering music-related tech in a approach that different firms didn’t do.
Ping fails to realize traction
Early on, Apple skilled vital success with Ping. Nevertheless, issues went downhill after Cupertino crowed in regards to the 1 million customers who signed up within the first 48 hours.
To begin with, Ping didn’t exemplify Apple design at its greatest. It proved too fiddly to make use of, and felt much less like a real social community than an try and promote music by including a veneer of interplay on prime of the iTunes Music Retailer. Plus, Ping lacked Fb integration attributable to a (by no means fully defined) breakdown in negotiations between the 2 firms.
Finally, Ping grew to become one other failed try by Apple to enter the web providers area (following its failed MobileMe experiment and the disastrous eWorld launch in 1994).
Apple pulls the plug on Ping social community, focuses on constructing Apple Music
The writing was on the wall for Ping from early 2012, when new Apple CEO Tim Prepare dinner mentioned the service’s lack of traction on the All Issues Digital convention.
“We tried Ping and the shopper voted and mentioned, ‘This isn’t one thing I wish to put a number of power into,’” Prepare dinner mentioned. “Some clients adore it, however there’s not an enormous quantity that do, so will we kill it? I don’t know. I’ll take a look at it.” Prepare dinner additionally mentioned Apple didn’t “must have a social community.”
Apple shut down Ping on September 30, 2012. Two years later, Apple purchased Beats Electronics for $3 billion and used the acquisition to gas its personal music streaming service. Rebranded as Apple Music, the subscription service launched on June 30, 2015.
With 24/7 radio stations, prime 100 charts and different music-discovery options, Apple Music at present fulfills among the promise of Ping.
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