Facebook have told TechCrunch "we have no plans to launch a music service", which is a pretty unequivocal statement and probably means Facebook Music will go live on Monday.

There has been chatter for years now that Facebook would launch some sort of proprietary music service to compete with MySpace's music platform, the strong link to music being the latter's only real USP over the former for sometime now.

For a while Facebook were in talks with Universal's ultimately canned digital music venture TotalMusic, and had Universal been able to persuade all of its major label competitors to get involved (it was Warner who were the main hold out) a Facebook-branded TotalMusic streaming and download service might now be operational.

After Facebook and TotalMusic stopped working together, talk of a Facebook music service died down. But MySpace's acquisition of iLike last year made some speculate that Facebook might again look to create some sort of official music facility, given that iLike control the most popular music-based third-party app used by Facebook users.

TechCrunch approached the social networking firm for clarification on its music plans this week, after someone noticed a mysterious official looking 'music app' was appearing in some people's application settings lists on Facebook. But the social networking company say that was a mistake.

If Facebook have decided once and for all to stay out of the digital music domain that's probably good news for MySpace, who are increasingly positioning themselves as an entertainment platform rather than a true social networking community. It's just a shame that the expanded MySpace Music service - launched here in the UK late last year of course - is so totally awful. It's enjoyed some success in the US, but when Spotify launches there (or more American music fans start to discover Grooveshark), you really have to wonder how long MySpace's music service can continue to trundle along in its current form.

MySpace Music has done a deal with TuneCore, providing unsigned bands with a way to earn from their music being played on the streaming music service. Perhaps they are feeling guilty about previously telling unsigned bands to sell their music through the Snocap download widget, only to then play a role in the closure of said widget before all artists had had their royalties paid (more on that here).

Anyway, TuneCore is a service that enables unsigned artists to get their music on a whole string of download stores around the world with relatively little hassle. Unlike most aggregators, TuneCore charge a set fee (from 99 cents) for using their service but then pass on 100% of revenue from any downloads sold. It's actually quite a good service, especially for artists with only a few songs to distribute.

TuneCore's tie up with MySpace Music is significant because most of the other platforms they service are a la carte download stores, whereas with MySpace TuneCore artists will, of course, be receiving a nominal royalty for each time their songs get streamed.

There were reports that TuneCore's deal with MySpace included some sort of exclusivity arrangement, but that doesn't seem to be true and the social networking flim flam has said that, in due course, it expects to set up arrangements with other services that enable unsigned bands to get royalties from their expanded music service. However, for the time being the only way for bands not represented by a major, Merlin or an aggregator like IODA or The Orchard to get royalties from MySpace Music is by hiring the services of TuneCore.