Ping, Apple's largely ignored attempt at a music-focused social network, is officially shutting down Sept. 30.

During Apple's media event Wednesday, Apple introduced a redesigned iTunes interface for desktop and iOS devices, but Ping was noticeably absent. The new iTunes will be available in October.

Apple introduced Ping at the company's fall 2010 iPod music event as a social network for music where users could follow ther friends and favorite musical artists to discover and talk about new music. Steve Jobs described it as "sort of like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes."

We had high hopes for Ping at the outset. In a 2010 article, we called it "too big to fail" and cited Apple's then 150 million iTunes customers (and their credit cards) and the impending death of Myspace as reasons why the social network could become a social hot spot for music.

But Ping ended up landing half-baked. A deal with Facebook reportedly fell through, leaving the service lacking in the friend-discovery department. And it felt uncomfortably commercial, with frequently prompting users to buy tracks.

Speaking at the May All Things Digital conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook said, "We tried Ping and I think the customer voted and said, 'This isn’t something that I want to put a lot of energy into.'"

Apple might be redirecting its energies in this area on a Pandora-like custom radio service, according to recent reports. If true, it seems like Apple could eventually roll that into iTunes' new enhanced playlist and Next Up feature fairly seamlessly.