Facebook held its f8 developer conference yesterday, announcing a range of new initiatives and features focused around mobile apps. The most immediately relevant to music is something called AppLinks: a way for developers to quickly link between apps on mobile devices as if they were websites. Music firms Songkick, Mixcloud, Vevo, iHeartRadio, Rdio and Spotify are among the initial partners, with Songkick explaining what it’ll mean for its Spotify integration: “Without a standard way to link between apps, the Spotify mobile app links to our mobile web pages,” explained its blog post. “Though that’s still an okay experience, we’ve wanted to enable smooth deep linking between Spotify’s mobile apps and our iOS and Android apps.” AppLinks does just that. Also announced yesterday: a mobile Like button designed to be used in apps to share, just as people can from websites, and an anonymous login that lets people log in to apps using their Facebook identity WITHOUT sharing those details with the developer – as well as more granular control over what data does get shared if they decide they want to. Finally, Facebook unveiled its long-rumoured mobile advertising network for other people’s apps. Facebook Audience Network could well be of interest to ad-supported music apps in the coming months.
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Tools: Kaiber
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