In an automotive first, Kia Motors America (KMA) and music-loving Facebook users are creating a one-of-a-kind online playlist, titled “Kia Rio Windows Down,” through Spotify, the award-winning digital music service that embraces sharing music and hearing tracks instantly by hitting play on any music post or posting tracks on Facebook and Twitter.

Since the submission period began on the Kia Rio Facebook page in February, more than 1,100 songs have been submitted for inclusion on the playlist on Spotify, with song selections totaling 15 hours of music and an average of 24 minutes of time spent per user listening to the playlist, which provides an environment for users to listen, discover, and share the unique playlist with their friends.

To create the perfect playlist for a joyride in the all-new Kia Rio subcompact, songs from Spotify’s library of more than 15 million tracks can be submitted for the playlist until April 15, and will remain on the Spotify platform indefinitely.

“From our ‘Share Some Soul’ ad featuring LMFAO’s ‘Party Rock Anthem’ to Motley Crue belting out ‘Kickstart My Heart’ in last month’s Super Bowl commercial, music plays an important role in Kia’s marketing efforts and being the first in the auto industry to partner with Spotify continues that trend,” said Michael Sprague, vice president, marketing & communications, KMA.

“Spotify is an innovative music service, and aligning with a new platform that embraces the sharing of music was a natural fit for Kia to extend our Rio launch. Being the first to create a car-centric playlist on Spotify in the U.S. increases Kia’s interaction with our target audiences that are passionate about music and social media.”

Kia Motors is the one of the world’s fastest moving global automotive brands; from 2009-2011 Kia launched more new vehicles in the U.S. than any other automaker, and under the guidance of chief design officer Peter Schreyer earned a reputation as an industry leader in automotive styling.

Kia Motors America’s full line of fuel-efficient and fun-to-drive cars and CUVs has earned critical acclaim and dramatically increased consumer awareness, perception and consideration for the brand. In 2011, KMA recorded its 17th consecutive year of market share growth, thanks in part to the largest increase of any major brand in perceived quality and the industry’s highest brand loyalty ranking.

The article Kia Rio Windows Down: Playlist for Drivers on Spotify appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Rumors started back in July that Facebook was preparing to launch a new music streaming service. This new platform is expected to be officially announced on September 22 at Facebook’s f8 developer conference in San Francisco.  This service will allow users to listen to music for free without leaving Facebook.com.

Facebook will not directly stream the music itself but rather rely on partners to provide the musical content. These partners would supply music platforms from their server to play on an embedded music player on users Facebook page.

Currently Facebook is initialed partnered with three third party music service providers, Spotify, MOG, and Rdio. Similar to “liking” a Facebook page these companies will be allowed to publish users’ activity on their Facebook pages. Facebook is expected to partner with more companies in the future.

It appears that Facebook’s music platform will be a way for users share a song or playlist with Facebook friends. Playlist and song can be shared from one streaming music site to another. This music platform will make it easy for users to discover new artists based upon ones that their friends have “liked.”

If Facebook launches globally it will be providing more than 750million people with free music.  Although it is possible for this service to fail, it seems highly unlikely.  Who doesn’t love free music?

It is rumored that Facebook will not only provide music streaming, but also allow movie and video game streaming services as well.  Currently a limited number Warner Brothers and Miramax films are available to rent via Facebook.  However these limited number movie rentals don’t even compare the number of movie rentals that Netflix does.

One big question is how will this affect the future of Netflix?

The article Facebook Launches New Music Platform appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

The European digital music service Spotify is now available in the United States. With the motto “Hello America. Spotify here”, users have since July 14 been able to sign up for a free, ad-supported version of the on-demand service, which is still invite-only for now. To register, visit Spotify.com and submit your email address. The company will distribute invitations in the coming weeks.

On July 6, Spotify surprised its users with the following message posted on its official website: “The award-winning music service that’s taken Europe by storm will soon be landing on US shores. Millions of tracks ready to play instantly, on your computer and your phone.”

In addition, as The Huffington Post reported two weeks ago “Amazon, Google, Apple, and now Facebook: The social network is reportedly preparing to launch a streaming music service in a partnership with music startup Spotify. Sources close to the deal add that Facebook users would see the Spotify icon on the left side of the newsfeed, and click to install.” They also added that the service will only be available in countries where Spotify is currently used, meaning that Americans would not have access until Spotify launches in the U.S.

In an interview earlier this year to The Huffington Post,  Facebook’s  ex-president, Sean Parker, called Spotify “the realization of the dream we had with Napster,” going on to add that he thought it was “really, really, really cool.”

As the Spotify CEO and co-founder Daniel Ek said once in a conference held by  tech blog AllThingsD, so far the problem has been partly that Spotify is not just a technology company that needed to build and release its product. It also had to make complex deals with recording companies and he added, “When it launches, it will cost $10 a month in the U.S.”

Since it was launched in Switzerland on October 2008, Spotify has spread through different Europeans countries. The service is, as of May 2011, only available in Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and soon Denmark and USA. In those countries you have three different account types; Spotify Open (10 hours per month for free), Unlimited( unlimited music on your computer for 4,99 Euros per month) and Premium (offline mode, mobile device support, enhanced sound quality and exclusive content for 9,95 Euros per month).

By the end of September 2010, a Spotify spokesperson announced that they had reached the 10 million users, and he also remarked that the service did indeed have 10 million tracks by that time. While Spotify’s catalog was rapidly approaching iTunes’ 11 million figure, it was still quite some distance short of Apple’s 160 million iTunes users. This fact could be due to the reason that so far Spotify was not available in the States, which is the world’s largest music market, and iTunes is.

Recently, Spotify has also announced a digital music service with Virgin Media that will enable users to stream music through their televisions. Clearly, Spotify is gaining support from music labels and mobile carriers as they know consumers will follow. Spotify could be a welcome competitor to iTunes.

The article Spotify lands into the US Market appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Facebook keeps surprising us, and it is incredible all the comforts and facilities that it keeps providing to its users. People have the chance to interact by diverse ways such as sending messages, posting walls, chatting, showing photos, tagging, linking videos, creating groups, events, and much more. But the company is always thinking one step ahead, and now, “the users will be able to stream and share music through the social network” (Matthew Perpetua, Rolling Stone Magazine).

“Listening to music is something that people do with their friends,” Mark Zuckerberg stated. “Music, TV, news, books — those types of things I think people just naturally do with their friends. I hope we can play a part in enabling those new companies to get built, and companies that are out there producing this great content to become more social.” Facebook wants to bring its users all kind of applications they can imagine. And it is thinking of how to make it possible for its users to share their favorite multimedia, such as songs, albums, series, news etc.

The New York Times says: “Facebook, which has nearly 700 million users, would not comment on its plans. But analysts and media executives said the company’s move into media was part of its ambition to become a hub for all types of activities on the Internet. And as the company sees it, people increasingly define themselves through the media they consume, they said”.

All the procedures and developments are confidential information, and Facebook is not providing too much details, they only stated that: “We’re always looking for better ways to help people discover the most relevant content on Facebook but have nothing to announce.”

On the other hand, a Spotify spokesman said:” We’re continuously working together to make the social experience on Spotify the best it can be and welcome relationships with any company looking to innovate by building more social value into the user experience.”

The article Facebook and Spotify Join To Offer a New Way of Music Sharing appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.