Facebook today announced on their blog that they are adding music services on Facebook that will allow users to listen along with their friends to whatever they are listening to. Users can also listen together in a group with one of the friends being the DJ.

Users can listen to the same song, at the exact same time. Facebook equates the experience to being in a club, only at your chair or on your smartphone instead of in an actual club. Still, it’s a good idea that has a lot of traction.

All this works by looking at which friend has a musical note by their name in the chat sidebar. Hover over the name and a dialog box should appear with the option to “listen with” that friend. The music will play through the service that the friend is using. When a new song starts, the party will move into the new song as well.

Users also have the option to chat about what they are listening to. As other people start listening to, they will join the party in a group chat. Only the people that a user has shared their listening activity with can see when they are listening with a friend. They can also control their privacy settings on the app’s page.

This is a great way to discover new music, just as Pandora, Spotify (with an app) and other music services do. While Facebook is using these services to stream the music, it’s also expanding their ever evolving role in social media. Music is a great way to connect with friends and Facebook is making that easier.

Now if only Facebook would let me stream my own personal music collection to my friends. Then the goal of making all of my friends aware of the excellence that is Virtual Boy would be complete.

The music app is currently compatible with Spotify and Rdio. Facebook tells us that they hope to support more services soon. The app launches today and will be rolling out to users within the next two weeks.

At La La (still in invitation-only beta but scheduled to launch in the next few months), users can scroll through public “have” and “want” lists to trade used CDs. A trade is required to obtain new music, and La La charges $1 per trade plus a 49-cent prepaid shipping envelope.

Here’s where it gets really different. Unlike the giant labels who drop scraps from the table for the musicians who actually have some talent, Nguyen says that twenty percent of all trading revenues will go to the artists.

“Despite what is depicted on MTV’s Cribs, a wonderfully entertaining show, most musicians don’t live large with a big house and five cars,” said Nguyen.

“Rather, the majority of musicians struggle to make a living from their recordings and must depend on other income producing activities such as performing concerts or selling merchandise.”

Looking to make music a “more communal social experience” and less of a corporate money grab, Nguyen set up his music discovery start-up with about $9 million in initial funding.

If an album can’t be found on the trading list, users can buy a new CD through a deal with CD distributor Baker Taylor. Though the site will eventually offer digital downloads, Nguyen does not plan to offer single track downloading like offerings available on iTunes and other services.

“Selling one song at a time is like selling just one chapter of a book,” Nguyen said.

Currently the holistic trading site has about 250 beta members who have traded over 12,000 CDs since November.

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