A piece on CNet speculates on the possibility that Facebook will be launching a digital download store for music in the future.

Although Facebook’s official line on the idea is that there are no plans “at this time”, Dan Farber’s article makes for interesting reading: Facebook is ever expanding, with a smart phone similar to the iPhone or Samsung Galaxy heavily rumoured, and Facebook Payments / Facebook Credits (the system lonely people use to buy credits for games like Farmville) generated around 15 percent of the company’s revenue in 2011 – $557 million. Almost as much as FACT’s, then.

Farber argues that the logical next step for the company is to unite Facebook Payments / Credits with the Facebook App Store to create a “full blown store of digital goods, from movies and books to music and apps”. As you’d expect, Facebook will take a cut from sales in a similar fashion to iTunes, and you’ve got to presume that the minute you buy one mp3 your entire friends list will know about it. Time to update those privacy settings again, and not for the first time.

As the piece points out, with part of Mark Zuckerberg’s manifesto for Facebook outlining an intent to “build the services that give people the power to share and help them once again transform many of our core institutions and industries”, it would hardly be an out of character move for the company.

You can read the full article here.