If you’re a user of Apple’s social network for music Ping then we have bad news today as Ping is set to be retired with the next release of iTunes. Although this news will not exactly surprise many people as Ping remains one of Apple’s few ideas that hasn’t taken off, there are bound to be at least some disappointed Ping users.

There have been previous hints that Apple was ready to drop its Ping venture and CEO Tim Cook said back in May, “We tried Ping and I think the customer voted and said this isn’t something I want to put a lot of energy into,” although at that time there was nothing definite about Ping pinging off. However news today is that sources close to the company say that Ping will disappear with the next iTunes update.

The news comes to us from Mashable, sourced from All Things D, and will leave many people wondering why Apple failed with this social network venture. Ping never really took off, maybe partly because of its limited access to only a certain amount of iTunes users. Other pointers to its poor showing include a lack of artist profiles and also the amount of spam and commerce use rather than social interaction.

In the last couple of days with iOS 6 being detailed at Apple’s WWDC 2012 we also learned that along with Twitter that has already been integrated, iOS 6 will also feature Facebook integration. This was another sign then that Apple was giving up on Ping as it was obvious that it was now superfluous to requirements.

As we said then, we’re not surprised at the demise of Ping but would like to hear from readers about this. Did you try Ping but not for long? Maybe you’re a regular user and are saddened by this news? Will anybody miss it? Let us know with your comments.