Facebook Launches Band Pages

Facebook has been working on a music service to give bands and labels a way to post and sell their own music and music-related items.

Pages on the new Facebook Music, which launched Thursday, are free to create, and include sections for a music player, photos/videos, discography, selling band merchandise (MusicShop) and an iCast feature that lets bands post bulletins to their fans' profile pages.

Facebook Music lets fans rate and review songs, which stream in their entirety and can be purchased with a click from the iTunes Store.

The launch is long overdue, and makes loads of sense for bands and for Facebook, but it would be nice if the music were in the un-DRMed MP3 format. Ideally, fans would be able to embed songs in their own profile pages. (You can embed an entire band in your Facebook Mini-Feed, but not individual songs.)

Facebook's move could come as a setback for the various companies that have been putting music on Facebook using Facebook apps, because the main thing they have going for them now is that they let users post music (even 30-second samples) to their profiles. MySpace also might start to get worried -- I'm sure I'm not the only one who uses that site solely for auditioning bands.