Welcome to R-Blog, our weekly blog keeping a finger on the pulse of technology and digital media. This week's headlines include two important pieces of news from Facebook and Amazon's headline-grabbing entry into the music market. You'll find the details below. Happy weekend, everyone!

Facebook's New Solution to Boost Sales: Shop

Wanting to drive more sales traffic from Pages, Facebook recently rolled out Shop in Turkey too — a feature we could describe as "placing a product in a photo with a link."

With Shop — arguably Facebook's biggest and best move yet on driving sales — e-commerce companies won't just be sharing a product photo in their Facebook posts anymore; they'll be able to link straight through to their e-commerce page, much like tagging a friend in a photo on Facebook.

As well as linking through to the e-commerce page, the Shop feature also lets you list products directly on Pages.

When a user clicks on a product, they land on a product detail page within Facebook, get all the detailed information about it, and can then move through to the e-commerce site from there. It's worth noting that for brands abroad, or those with a Stripe account, users can even complete the purchase at this stage.

Amazon Launches Its Own Music Service to Rival Spotify and Apple Music

Amazon's music service, which had been the subject of rumours for quite a while, has now officially launched. Amazon unveiled Amazon Music Unlimited (AMU) this week, and, as expected, it arrived as a new service separate from Prime Music. Starting at $3.99, AMU rivals popular online music-streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music.

AMU offers millions of songs ad-free and lets you download songs to your device to listen offline. The service works on iOS and Android devices, PC and Mac, Echo devices, Amazon tablets, and the web. As with Amazon's other value-added services, its offers tailored to its own audience are the standout feature that sets the music service apart from its rivals. For standalone members, the price is $9.99 — on a par with its rivals. But if you're a Prime member, you can get the service for $7.99 a month, or $3.99 if you're an Amazon Echo user. The family plan is $14.99 a month.

AMU's primary selling point is Echo. Amazon's speaker system, which lets you live alongside its voice-controlled smart assistant Alexa, works integrated with AMU. AI-powered Alexa learns your listening habits over time, and, even when you just say "play music," picks tracks to suit your taste. It can also respond to more complex commands, like "play popular 80s funk songs" or "play happy tracks." Alexa also follows song lyrics and can pick up a command like "play the song that goes …"

Amazon Music Unlimited is launching in the US first, before rolling out to the UK, Germany and Austria a while later. Its biggest disadvantage in competing with Spotify and Apple Music looks set to be its global reach.

Facebook Launches Workplace, Its Corporate Social Network

One in every four people worldwide uses the social network Facebook to keep in touch with friends and family. Mark Zuckerberg and his company have now moved into employees' internal office communication too, launching Workplace — a Slack and Yammer rival built specifically for companies. Previously reaching more than 5 million users through the closed beta of Facebook at Work, the service, under its new name, has now become a platform any company can offer to its staff, should it want to.

Workplace users will set up a corporate identity, without needing to link it to their own personal Facebook account, and keep using tools familiar from Facebook — News Feed, Groups, Chat and Live Video. New features built specifically for Workplace include analytics tools suited to employees, single sign-on (SSO) and better IT integration, along with Live, Reactions, automatic translation, and voice calling for video and groups. With Work Chat, a separate messaging app built alongside Workplace, employees will also be able to stay in touch comfortably outside the work environment.

Companies will be able to use Workplace free for a three-month trial period, after which they'll pay based on the number of active employees using Workplace. Companies with fewer than 1,000 users will pay $3 per user, those with between 1,000 and 10,000 users will pay $2 per user, and those with more than 10,000 users will pay $1 per user.