Update (July 9, 12:54 p.m.): A Facebook spokesperson told The Verge, "we have no plans to go into music streaming." There goes that idea.

---

Original Story: This is interesting. According to Music Ally reports, Facebook is considering entering the music streaming business. The social media juggernaut is thinking about starting its very own streaming service. Facebook reportedly are in early talks with labels about a potential streaming platform. Facebook is testing ad-supported videos with a small group of media partners to discover a new way to make some serious money from video streaming. Variety published details of the trial that indicates “4 billion video views per day on average in the first quarter of 2015.”  The trial involves playing ads in between the videos and sharing 55% of the revenues with the partners providing the videos.

Facebook will reportedly expand from their trial run to music videos very soon and plan to follow that up with the launch of an audio music-streaming service to compete with the likes of Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal. The relationship between Facebook and music labels seems like destiny as Ally reports "With Facebook keen for labels to upload full music videos to its service, and labels just as keen to have monetisation in place before they do it, the ad-supported trial may be the key to any music deals."

“It’s a mass land grab. Facebook going into the video space was always going to be an enormous, ambitious land grab and no doubt something they’ve been planning for some time as the potential income from ad revenue will be incredible,” one of these anonymous sources said describing the streaming services battle. Details on Facebook's potential streaming service is still very insufficient.

 

More From XXL