I don't think Ping is quite as stillborn as the tech media seems to think. I'm seeing lots of bands I like with 40-50K followers already. This isn't exactly mainstream Top 40 stuff either. If someone is taking the time to go find bands to follow they're at least somewhat engaged in the service. For example Band of Horses has ~316,000 followers on FaceBook -- they have ~30,000 on Ping in less than a month. Considering FaceBook has 5x as many users as registered iTunes users this is an impressive start.
1) Ping is only available in the US, so a straight comparison of user numbers to FB isn't necessarily valid. You have take the number of US users of both iTunes and FB, and I don't think that breakdown is readily available.
2) Non-mainstream stuff is likely to be overrepresented in these sorts of things, since people who are into to music are more likely to use such new music services and are also likely to have more varied tastes.
Oops. I seem to remember reading comments from the original Ping announcement story that it was. I stand corrected.
My point is still valid though. To do proper comparison for Band of Horses, you have to take # of users in native English speaking markets. For FB, that is not the majority, though it is a large plurality; for iTunes, it may very well be the majority. Apple products aren't a significant part of the market in SE Asia, but FB is.
