Bono's investment firm rocks Facebook IPO to the tune of $1.5 billion

Bono, U2's lead singer and rocker-in-chief, has a reason to break out in song today: his investment in Facebook could make him one of the richest musicians on the planet, potentially eclipsing Paul McCartney, depending on how the social network's stock performs after its first day of trading Friday.

The musician, however, demurred when asked about how Facebook would affect his net worth. "Contrary to reports, I'm not a billionaire or going to be richer than any Beatle," he told MSNBC during an interview Friday about a food shortage in Africa.

Facebook's stock gained 23 cents and closed at $38.23 Friday, giving the company a $104.6 billion valuation.

Bono's investment in Facebook resulted from his role as a founder of Elevation Partners, a Silicon Valley venture firm that owns 2.3% of the stock, worth more than $1.5 billion, according to the Times' Technology blog. It's unclear how much of Elevation's stake in Facebook can be apportioned to Bono, who struck a humble note in his interview.

"In Elevation, we invest other people's money — endowments, pension funds," he said. "We do get paid, of course. But you know, I felt rich when I was 20 years old and my wife was paying my bills. Just being in a band, I’ve always felt blessed."

We're reminded of Bono's lyrics on "God: Part II" off of Rattle & Hum, released in 1988:

Don't believe in excess

Success is to give

Don't believe in riches

But you should see where I live

RELATED:

Facebook close to being a $100-billion company

Facebook underwriters prop up stock as shares near break-even

Senators want to prevent Facebook co-founder from dodging taxes

-- Alex Pham

Photo: Bono at a 2005 U2 concert in San Diego. Credit: Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times

Facebook changes band pages to Timeline format March 30

Musicians ranging from struggling local acts to international superstars will wake up to big changes in their public identity March 30.

That's the day Facebook will flip the layout switch on all of its "Pages" -- the identities created for all non-person entities -- to its Timeline format. This will de-emphasize the scrolling "wall" of posts and status updates in favor of the more graphic-intensive and topically organized new layout.

For musicians, it presents a significant change that might not be so welcome. Timeline prohibits a band from using popular third-party apps like BandPage, FanBridge, ReverbNation as their landing page.

Many acts used those features, as they allowed a curious fan's first encounter with a band's page to be a posted video, an email sign-up list, streaming tracks or other features. Those apps, while still available, will now be accessible only via a secondary tab.

The wide range of second-party apps did lend a certain scattershot MySpace-ness to the layout of Facebook's music sites, and the new format is a step toward uniformity and away from a band's ability to choose how to present itself.

Timeline does offer some useful features, like the ability to have a post top your Timeline for a week. Whether the switch is a step toward a more enjoyable experience for users, or a blow to a band's control over its Facebook presence, is to be determined. But for now, if you're a band and still attached to your Wall, start saying your final valedictions.

RELATED:

Facebook's facial-recognition opt-out

How to limit sharing on Facebook's new features

Facebook IPO could give California 2.5 billion over 5 years

-- August Brown

Photo: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at the headquarters in Palo Alto. Credit: Paul Sakuma / Associated Press

Facebook makes listening to music downright social

Just heard a great new track you can't wait to have your friends experience? Facebook now makes it easy to listen to it together.

Everywhere you look, people are going about their lives to the tunes of their own personal soundtrack. They sweat through “YMCA” at the gym, pound out programming code to Rammstein's brutal beats and nurse broken hearts with a mournful Bach cello concerto.

In the last few decades, technology has transformed music from a social gathering experience to an intensely solitary one in which donning a pair of headphones in public is equivalent to shouting, “Leave me alone!”

But in a move that shows the pendulum is swinging back toward a more social listening experience,Facebook just rolled out a feature that allows users to listen to music online with their friends — and host virtual DJ parties.

“You can listen to the same song, at the exact same time,” Alexandre Roche, a product designer at Facebook, wrote in a blog post last week announcing the new feature, “so when your favorite vocal part comes in you can experience it together, just like when you're jamming out at a performance or dance club.”

The concept of “social listening” is a modern day twist on the days when friends got together to take turns playing music for each other. A Saturday night's entertainment meant bringing a stack of albums and a six-pack to someone's house.

On Facebook, listeners can be miles away, engaged in different activities but still be sharing a narrow slice of life.

“Someone else can be going about whatever they are doing, and through music, you can just jump into that reality and experience what they're experiencing,” Roche said in an interview. “If they're having a bad day, you can experience that with them. If they see that a friend is listening with them, it might even brighten their day.”

Facebook's music ambitions get louder

Online streaming service Spotify has been quick to lend its support to Facebook's new music integration features, which the social media site unveiled at its F8 conference Thursday. Spotify chief Daniel Ek not only appeared at F8, but his company also unveiled a video in which it immediately declared that Spotify "hearts" Facebook. 

It doesn't take much scanning of social networking sites to see that a signficant number of users are, perhaps, more skeptical of the changes than are Ek and Spotify. Yet if Facebook's users ultimately adapt to the company's newly designed profiles, dubbed Timeline, they will find that music has the potential to play a more prominent role on the social network than ever before. With Timeline, which can be previewed on Facebook, each profile wall becomes sort of an online magazine, and applications are slotted in mini, block-like sections. 

The goal is to make it easier to listen and share music directly from a Facebook profile. So if a user, for instance, recommends a song from Spotify and allows that application to appear in a Timeline, a friend/follower can simply press a play button to listen to that song on the service. From the previews available online, it appears that such a feature would require both users to have an application installed. 

Live Nation taps into social with Facebook app

Social networks are great places to learn about concerts ... after they happen.

The tweets, FourSquare check-ins and real-time Facebook wall posts of live concerts only provoke jealousy and torture people who are sitting at home reading those updates, wishing they had known the band was in town.

For Live Nation, that represents a missed opportunity to sell tickets. To remedy this sad situation, the nation's largest concert promoter has created (what else?) an app.

The company's Concert Calendar on Facebook is an effort to proactively reach out to fans and let them know about upcoming concerts in their area.

With tens of thousands of events in Live Nation's database every year, the app doesn't just serve up all the concerts within a geographic area. Instead, it focuses on a few recommendations that are based on the type of music that the user has indicated they listen to in their profile or the bands that they've "liked" on Facebook.

To further personalize the concerts it recommends, the app taps into data from Last.fm, an online music service that tracks listeners' tastes. For example, The Dead Weather fans tend to like the White Stripes, while Kenney Chesney listeners prefer the Zac Brown Band.

The app adds a viral, social layer by alerting users which of their Facebook friends have clicked the app's RSVP button to indicate they'll be going to a concert. The idea is that people are more likely to go to a concert if someone they know is also going.

Topping off the app is a game-ification mechanism similar to that of FourSquare. Check out the badges section on the lower left of the screen shot above. Users can also accumulate points for recruiting friends, RSVPing for concerts, posting on their walls and so on. The points can be redeemed for credit toward buying a ticket, MP3s or other Live Nation merchandise.

The app, which is currently only available by invitation, is neither the first nor only one to help music fans find concerts. Songkick, StubHub and others also have local concert-finders for both the Web and on mobile devices.

But for Live Nation, it's already proven to be effective. In testing the RSVP feature on Facebook, the company found that every RSVP click correlates with about $5.30 in increased ticket sales, according to Gretchen Fox, Live Nation's vice president of social media.

-- Alex Pham

Twitter/ @AlexPham

Pop & Hiss switching to Facebook commenting system

Pop & Hiss today is switching to a new commenting system.

The system requires commenters to sign in through their Facebook accounts. People without Facebook accounts will not be able to leave comments.

Readers will have the option of posting their Pop & Hiss comments on their Facebook walls, but that's not required.

The change is part of an experiment on Pop & Hiss and several other Times entertainment blogs. Readers are welcome to express their opinions about the news -- and about how the new Facebook comments system is working.

Jimmy Orr, the Los Angeles Times managing editor in charge of latimes.com, discusses the Facebook system in greater depth.

-- Lisa Fung and Martin Beck