Bebo Inks Deal with iTunes UK

Social networking site Bebo has reached a deal with Apple's UK iTunes store to offer music tracks to British and Irish users from artists' Bebo profiles.

Social networking site Bebo has scored a minor coup: it has become the first social networking site to offer music tracks for sale directly from artists’s profile pages, rather than redirecting them to the iTunes store.

Although Bebo is based in San Francisco, it has established a significant base (some 8.8 million users) in the United Kingdom and Ireland, so it’s not much of a surprise that the iTunes deal applies to the UK version of the iTunes Store. Under the deal, British and Irish Bebo users will be able to buy songs from iTunes directly from artist profile pages within the Bebo site.

Bebo plans to promote the new capability with a “Free Single Saturday” promotion, which will offer users a free song from a different artist every week. Apple itself runs a similar promotion within iTunes, offering a new free single every week to iTunes users.

In the last few years, it has become the norm for music artists to maintain profile pages on social networking services like MySpace and Bebo, although in the case of major label artists these profiles are often maintained by publicity and PR staffers at a music label with little or no direct involvement of the artists’ themselves. However, social networking sites have also drawn fire from music labels and distributors for enabling users to post and distribute unauthorized music; Universal Music Group sued MySpace late last year over thousands of songs and videos illegally posted on MySpace pages, and just last month Warner Music Group has targeted social networking site iMeem with a lawsuit over similar infringements.