I don't think Ping is quite as stillborn as the tech media seems to think. I'm seeing lots of bands I like with 40-50K followers already. This isn't exactly mainstream Top 40 stuff either. If someone is taking the time to go find bands to follow they're at least somewhat engaged in the service. For example Band of Horses has ~316,000 followers on FaceBook -- they have ~30,000 on Ping in less than a month. Considering FaceBook has 5x as many users as registered iTunes users this is an impressive start.