How Warner Music Killed Facebook Music
January 15, 2009 at 04:23 AM EST
Facebook's ongoing effort to launch a free streaming music service is stalled, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation. The company was close to a deal that would bring free streaming music from three of the four big labels (Universal, Sony, EMI) through the Total Music joint venture. But the deal stalled when the lone holdout, Warner Music, refused to participate. Through most of 2008 Facebook said on and off record that they had no real interest in their own music application and that third parties like iLike could continue to build their Facebook music applications without fear of competition directly from Facebook. News leaked in the Fall, though, that Facebook had approached a number of third parties to power the official Facebook music application: