• WaTunes Signs Warner Music, Opens Store Inside Facebook Walls

    Sunday, April 11th, 2010

    Robin Wauters is the European Editor of tech blog The Next Web and lead editor of Virtualization.com. He was a senior staff writer at TechCrunch until his departure in February 2012. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in... → Learn More

    Detroit-based digital music company WaTunes has come to a licensing agreement with Warner Music Group, the third major record label to sign a deal with the startup after Universal and EMI.

    Warner has licensed its full catalog of music for use in WaTunes’ brand new Facebook application, which essentially lets people purchase digital music through a full-fledged storefront without the need to leave the popular social networking site.

    Thanks to the deal with Warner, WaTunes can now provide Facebook users with music from artists like The White Stripes, Seal, Madonna, Eric Clapton, Diddy, Ray Charles, and a lot more.

    With the Music Store Facebook app, users can discover and purchase millions of songs in high-quality MP3 format thanks to a partnership with MediaNet. It’s far from the only Facebook application to enable users to do that (Lala springs to mind), but notably, you don’t even need to sign up for a WaTunes account to be able to stream 30-second versions of songs or buy and download full tracks and albums.

    In addition, users can talk to friends while browsing the music store and share albums on their Facebook Wall of on MySpace, Twitter and other social networks.

    We should note the WaTunes Music Store is U.S. only for now, and only accepts credit card payments through Facebook.

    WaTunes recently announced that it aims to phase out its digital distribution services for independent artists and record labels. The company at the time said it would retain services for mobile applications, ringtones and licensing, but focus solely on its social platform and online marketplace going forward.

    Company: WaTunes
    Website: watunes.com
    Launch Date: June 16, 2006

    WaTunes is the world’s most convenient music store app created exclusively on Facebook! Facebook users are able to discover & download new music instantly without leaving the site. Users can also share music on any of their favorite social networks!

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    Website: wmg.com

    Warner Music Group (WMG) became the only stand-alone music company to be publicly traded in the United States in May 2005. With its broad roster of new stars and legendary artists, Warner Music Group is home to a collection of the best-known record labels in the music industry including Asylum, Atlantic, Bad Boy, Cordless, East West, Elektra, Maverick, Nonesuch, Reprise, Rhino, Roadrunner, Rykodisc, Sire, Warner Bros. and Word. Warner Music International, a leading company in national and international repertoire...

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    Company: Facebook
    Website: facebook.com
    Launch Date: February 1, 2004
    IPO: NASDAQ:FB

    Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 845 million monthly active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original...

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