With Facebook maturing as an app platform, we figured it was time to take a look at it from a music app — especially because Facebook and apps share an important similarity.

Facebook is basically one big, friendly, privatized version of the internet. Likewise, apps are little walled gardens where you can stream music without fussing with DRM, play Scrabble with only your friends, control the music playing in bars, and so on.

Facebook and apps are a match made in heaven with its own commerce engine (Facebook credits) and ready networks of friends, just waiting to interact with each other. Perhaps the most convincing sign that Facebook is a real app platform: Angry Birds is coming.

Still, Facebook apps differ from mobile apps in that they tend to be designed for sharing music and videos with friends, rather than listening to music on your own.

Here are some other traits we noticed among the 20 most popular Facebook apps listed in the chart below:

Displaying one’s favorite songs on one’s own page

Connecting with bands

Receiving “push” information (tour dates, audio releases, video releases)

Embedding full-track audio or video playback in a news stream (something you can also do by simply pasting in a YouTube URL, no app required)

Here are the 20 most popular Facebook apps, along with their official descriptions and monthly unique user count, according to Facebook’s official rankings:

Continue reading …

MySpace has become a laughing stock of sorts for having squandered its first-place status to Facebook, the same way Friendster lost its lead to MySpace. But when it comes to Facebook music apps, at least, MySpace looks quite healthy indeed. Three of its iLike apps rank among the most popular 20 music apps on Facebook. Maybe MySpace should have stayed about music.

Facebook spokeswoman Meredith Chin sent Evolver.fm some additional information about BandPage, the most popular music app on Facebook:

#1 music app on Facebook

#1 entertainment app on Facebook

24.5 percent growth in monthly active users in the last 30 days

Averages 800,000 daily active users

80,000 bands currently using BandPage

Image courtesy of Flickr/Horia Varlan

See Also: