I thought Ping was writing on the wall that they were going to go start a streaming model, but I may be wrong. Alone, Ping sucks. It's a limited social site because you can't really access the music that you're friends are sharing. It's Spotify, Mog, Rdio, and Zune without the streaming service.

My guess is that they wanted to release streaming in September, but the labels weren't completely on board at that point. They needed something to show in the new iTunes, so they released Ping.