It’s nothing new that the Internet has changed the music industry. But the Internet’s influence is not letting up. In fact, it’s continuing to change the music world in the manner that we share and discover new music.

With the coming of Spotify, the accessibility of music – in a completely legal way – has changed drastically. But there is another game-player coming to the table when it comes to shaking things up in the music and Internet worlds: our beloved Facebook. The social networking giant is now teaming up with companies like Spotify and Ticketmaster to make your sharing and music experience completely different from how it was 10 years ago, or even a few months ago. You can now do things like check where your Facebook friends are sitting at a Ticketmaster concert or see what your friends are listening to on Spotify.

Suddenly, a scene that was mostly isolated in terms of Internet use – you bought iTunes tracks on your own, and if you wanted to share them, it was mostly done illegally – has become much more communal. You can now see other friends’ posts, photos, videos and everything in between and know exactly what song they are listening to as they browse Facebook. And it’s not uncommon to see a friend start a band page for their newest project.

The Internet might not necessarily help out artists financially, but it creates a completely different platform and ease for spreading information quickly. Though you aren’t actually required to purchase any of the tracks on Spotify, it makes it extraordinarily easy to check out new music quickly. You see a friend of yours listening to a band, and you can check that band out with a couple of clicks at the most. Suddenly, you’ve got the music world at your fingertips, and artists have every Facebook user working as a PR person pro bono.

But though it’s easier for artists to be discovered, it’s also more challenging. Hundreds, maybe even thousands or millions, of musicians are posting music on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and any other social media network possible. There has to be something defining in their sound that catches someone’s attention.

In a virtual world where we’re used to getting things quickly – pressing enter gets your status published, a click tags someone on a photo, a Tweet communicates your feelings succinctly and quickly – our attention spans are much, much shorter. There isn’t the excitement of opening up a CD or LP and actually owning the tracks. There is only the intangible clicking on a track to hear perhaps a few seconds before we move on to the next one.

Having Facebook as a tool to market and identity is useful, but there is much out there now that it will likely create even more competition, even in the smallest of things. If a Facebook friend sees a song title, is it intriguing enough for them to want to click it?

Developments like these are only going to continue to blossom. Ticketmaster is even discussing the possibility of selling tickets on Facebook. The payoff, then, will also be large for Facebook, which will only continue to be an open window in laptops and computers across the world and for music lovers tied to a spectrum of genres.

It makes discovering music easier, but it also makes it even more unlikely that you’ll ever walk into a CD store again. As has been said time and time again, the world in which we purchased CDs and held them in our hands is slowly ending. And the newest features on Facebook are only likely to add to that.

So don’t forget to maybe buy a track or two when you check out a cool, new artist. The industry has to survive in order for you to keep sharing your favorite tracks.