With Facebook maturing as an app platform, we figured it was time to take a look at it from a music app — especially because Facebook and apps share an important similarity.
Facebook is basically one big, friendly, privatized version of the internet. Likewise, apps are little walled gardens where you can stream music without fussing with DRM, play Scrabble with only your friends, control the music playing in bars, and so on.
Facebook and apps are a match made in heaven with its own commerce engine (Facebook credits) and ready networks of friends, just waiting to interact with each other. Perhaps the most convincing sign that Facebook is a real app platform: Angry Birds is coming.
Still, Facebook apps differ from mobile apps in that they tend to be designed for sharing music and videos with friends, rather than listening to music on your own.
Here are some other traits we noticed among the 20 most popular Facebook apps listed in the chart below:
Displaying one’s favorite songs on one’s own page
Connecting with bands
Receiving “push” information (tour dates, audio releases, video releases)
Embedding full-track audio or video playback in a news stream (something you can also do by simply pasting in a YouTube URL, no app required)
Here are the 20 most popular Facebook apps, along with their official descriptions and monthly unique user count, according to Facebook’s official rankings:
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| Name/Link| Official description| Monthly Active Users
| BandPage (RootMusic)| BandPage allows bands to create a custom hub with their tour schedule, music, pictures, twitter and wall all in one place. | 18.5 million
| My Band: Profile Pages for Bands and Musicians (ReverbNation)| Im a band? Add a Band Profile to your fan page or personal page. Unlimited songs, pics, member info, show schedule, and a “join the mailing list” function. Fans can add/share music, buy tracks or tickets. Stats to track everything. | 6 million
| Spotify| Connect with your friends on Spotify. | 2.2 million
| Music (iLike)| Add a music tab to your profile. Get personalized concert alerts. Create and share playlists. Discover and share new music and free MP3s. And prove you’re a Music Genius: play the iLike Challenge. | 1.5 million
| Bandsintown| Bandsintown is an application for live music fans and artists. Be the first to know when your favorite bands are coming to town, and if you’re an artist — easily display upcoming tour and ticket info on Facebook. | 1.4 million
| YouTube Video Box| Share your favourite videos on your profile and Facebook pages. Easily find videos, add them to your favourites and share with friends. Additional features include viewing your friends favourite videos and syncronising your YouTube.com account. | 850K
| iLike this Artist (iLike)| Musicians, you can show off your fans on iLike on your artist page. This will add an “iLike this artist” button on your page, and will show your (larger) fan count across the entire iLike network. | 725K
| YouTube| The largest worldwide video-sharing community on Facebook. | 590K
| Profile Song| Profile Song lets you add a song to your Facebook profile. Let your friends easily hear your favorite song. You can choose from a large library of songs or upload your own. You can also send and receive music suggestions. | 589K
| iCast (iLike)| Send bulletins to fans with iCast, the best bulletins system on Facebook. You can send multimedia or mobile bulletins, or just plain blogs. Your bulletins will show not only to Facebook fans, but via iLike across 10 different networks. | 501K
| SoundCloud| The SoundCloud Player allows you to put tracks that are on SoundCloud.com right in your Facebook profile, complete with timed comments, a crisp waveform display and all. | 411K
| MixPod Music Playlist| Build a music playlist for your profile. Search for songs or upload your own. Full length tracks. Customize your playlist with 18 player skins to choose from with custom colors. 100 percent free. | 361K
| Music (Burst Development)| Music allows you to add multiple songs to your profile by either uploading a song, giving us a link, or searching a database. | 350K
| YouTube (Hougar)| Browse and watch Youtube Videos on Facebook. | 341K
| Slide FunSpace| Over six billion videos and more exchanged on Slide FunSpace. Find and share videos, posters, graffiti, and more with all your friends. | 335K
| Livestream| Livestream is the simplest way to broadcast your events live on the internet and to mobile devices. It’s completely free… and now it’s available right within your Facebook Page. | 329K
| iLoader for iPhone/iPad/iPod| An iPhone application that batch uploads photos and videos to Facebook. It’s super fast and easy to use. It also allows you to watch Facebook videos too. | 323K
| werevertumorro| This app sends you a notification when werevertumorro releases a new video. | 234K
| Shane Dawson TV| This app updates YouTube fans when new videos are relased. | 181K
MySpace has become a laughing stock of sorts for having squandered its first-place status to Facebook, the same way Friendster lost its lead to MySpace. But when it comes to Facebook music apps, at least, MySpace looks quite healthy indeed. Three of its iLike apps rank among the most popular 20 music apps on Facebook. Maybe MySpace should have stayed about music.
Facebook spokeswoman Meredith Chin sent Evolver.fm some additional information about BandPage, the most popular music app on Facebook:
Image courtesy of Flickr/Horia Varlan
