Ping: iTunes Social Music Network

Discovering new music is easier and faster than ever with all of the online resources at your disposal.  However there is one software-based service that operates completely through your iTunes.  This service is called Ping and it is a great music recommender that operates off your iTunes music library.

Apple unveiled Ping with it’s release of iTunes 10.0 in September of 2010.  Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) describes Ping as, “Facebook and Twitter meets iTunes.”  Ping offers the same fundamental services as most social networking sites but instead of connecting people to people, it connects people to music.  In order to utilize Ping all you have to do is select a particular song in your iTunes library and click on the Ping button that appears next to the song.  From here a drop-down menu appears that gives you the opportunity to like the song, post about it or view the artist page on iTunes.

In order to be able to access these options you must first set up your Ping account on iTunes, which does not take much time or effort and is totally worth the investment.  In addition, Ping also allows for users to track what their friends are purchasing off of the iTunes as well as view what other people with simliar musical interests are listening to off of iTunes.  This system usually yields quite effective song recommendations for its users to browse through and discover new music.  On top of all these features, Ping allows for users to view what concerts their friends have attended and reviewed and even provides users the ability to purchase tickets for upcoming concerts straight off of the iTunes store.