Apple publishes guidelines for artists on Ping


13 Oct 2010

Apple has published an artist’s guide to using its music-based social network on iTunes, Ping.

The service was launched six weeks ago, however, at that stage, only very popular and mainstream artists were a part of it, such as Lady Gaga and Katy Perry.

Distribution services, such as TuneCore and CDBaby, stepped in to help bands set up artist pages, however, most bands are still waiting to get set up due to Apple’s quality control processes.

There were also many questions as to what types of content would be allowed on Ping.

While more artists have joined since its launch, Apple is further trying to help artists connect to it through these newly released guidelines.

The guidelines include tutorials on starting a profile and uploading content.

This publication also includes many policies, stating that artists should not include external links unless it is within the Event feed.

Ping posts can not link or include advertisements to sites outside of iTunes and the About section cannot contain URLs.

They also ask artists to only create a profile when they’re ready to make a few posts to keep it active.

They recommend, for the ‘Music I Like’ section, that artists don’t pick the same album multiple times or that they don’t pick their own music.