Ping on iTunes

I can't tell you how many times I have accidentally hit the little button that says "ping" on it when trying to select a song on iTunes. I have read iTunes' description about it "a social network for music," but I never really got into it. Which is interesting because as anyone who knows me will tell you, social networking and music are two of my favorite things in this world. I did a little Google research (if you can call it that) and it seems sort of interesting. You can "follow" people like you would on twitter. There was conversation about following celebrities to see their music tastes and opinions, which could be interesting. The question is, why hasn't this taken off?

I like to think of myself as someone who it pretty up to date on my social media, and I have absolutely zero experience with Ping. I'm sure some people use it somewhere, but in all the communications classes I've taken, where we all pride ourselves on being ahead of trend when it comes to social networking sites, and even hearing from so many guest speakers, I have not once heard anyone even bring up the word "Ping." This is not to say that it won't happen eventually, but from the sounds of things online, there are still some kinks that need to be worked out.

From the get-go people were complaining about false accounts (Ben Folds announced that someone made an account under his name that was not him), and for obvious reasons this can create some legal issues what with record labels, etc. It isn't extremely easy to navigate either based on my limited attempted use with it. It doesn't seem like many artists have gotten very into Ping either, which isn't helping. For example, when I clicked on the little Ping icon next to one of my current favorite songs, I tried to see the artist profile, and all that comes up is a list of their albums and songs. I would love to see what things the artist suggests, and what other people who "like" the artist suggest. 

I originally thought about this the other day when we were talking about Pandora algorithms, iTunes giving music suggestions based on what other listeners like, and so forth. It made me think that if Ping was utilized correctly and by more people it could be a really powerful marketing tool for artists, producers, and iTunes themselves... not that they seem to be having any trouble.