Facebook Bails on Project Playlist, Too
Four days after MySpace cut the legs out from under Project Playlist by disabling the music streaming service's app, Facebook is following suit. Here's the official statement from Facebook PR: … The only surprise here is that it took Facebook …
Context & Ripple Effects
Project Playlist built its audience by distributing an unlicensed streaming app through the big social networks, but that distribution is collapsing fast: MySpace disabled the app, and four days later Facebook has followed suit. The move lands awkwardly for Facebook, which had spent late 2007 telegraphing its own music ambitions — reports that it was building a platform for bands aimed squarely at MySpace (a music platform for bands, not an iTunes killer) and that 'Facebook Music is coming'. The immediate backdrop is rights-holder pressure, which only intensified: weeks later, coverage traced how Warner Music killed Facebook Music outright.
First-order effects
- Project Playlist loses its two largest distribution channels within a single week — MySpace first, then Facebook — cutting off the viral installs and traffic the service depended on.
- Facebook users lose one-click access to Playlist's streaming catalog inside the network, and Facebook formally sides with the labels' position on the disputed catalog.
Second-order effects
- MySpace's move set the template, and Facebook matching it within days signals coordinated pressure from the major labels on any platform hosting Playlist's app — other networks face the same choice: comply or inherit the rights fight.
- Playlist's ad-supported, unlicensed-streaming model becomes commercially untenable at scale, forcing either a pivot to licensing deals or decline into a niche widget.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, social networks stop treating music as free third-party app territory and instead negotiate directly with rights holders for licensed integrations — a path this same coverage arc traces through Facebook's later licensed 'Listen' button and, years on, reports of a Spotify-style streaming service inside Facebook.
- The episode helps establish the durable rule that catalog owners, not platforms, gatekeep music distribution on social networks — a power balance still visible decades later when Facebook shutters audio features like podcasts and Soundbites.
The trend: Social platforms' music strategies are converging on licensing-first partnerships with rights holders, displacing the era of unlicensed third-party streaming apps.