I'll start off by saying that I personally will probably have little use for Ping. My musical tastes are fairly, shall we say, idiosyncratic. Having said that

I'll start off by saying that I personally will probably have little use for Ping. My musical tastes are fairly, shall we say, idiosyncratic. Having said that, Ping seems to be a targeted product, aimed at a particular audience. It is a sales tool for music. If you fit the demographic it will probably work pretty well. My guess is that computer geeks (include me) are not the demographic Steve is aiming for. If you teenager, and listen to whatever 90% of teenagers listen to these days, then it might work quite well for you. The product's success will not depend on how well people like the typical Hacker News reader like it...