Amongst the hardware refreshes announced by Apple today came a new “social media platform for music”: Ping.

It’s a strange kind of beast at first glance, being a last.fm/twitter hybrid where you can follow artists and friends, and share your musical tastes. All good things - but you can only use it in iTunes, or on an iDevice. No browser client.

That just seems far too limiting for a social media tool. I use iTunes and an iPhone, but I spend a minimal amount of time in the software itself, especially on the PC. I don’t want to have to load up a monolithic piece of software and a huge playlist just to “like” a track. If I’m at work, where a lot of music listening happens, I can’t load my library so can’t share anything.

Wired is saying Ping is “already too big to fail”, but without a web interface I can’t see it taking off. Famous last words no doubt.