Unlike the recently launched video sharing app Vine, the music app will follow existing Twitter branding, simply being called Twitter Music. The app is a good fit for the platform; music is already the most talked about subject on Twitter and the top five most followed accounts are those of artists.
After all the work Facebook has done recently with it's OpenGraph technology - which allows services like Spotify and SoundCloud to feature heavily in news feeds - it is no surprise that Twitter is now looking to level the playing field and make the most of the massive amounts of musical content on its network.
The news of the new app follows Twitter's acquisition of music discovery platform We Are Hunted at the end of last year, which used an algorithm similar to hypem.com to create top 100 playlists for both emerging and mainstream artists. If you visit the We Are Hunted website or try to use the Spotify app, you will see that both services have been disabled, which could be a pre-cursor to Twitter readying the adapted technology from We Are Hunted for the new Twitter Music app.
The platform powering the Twitter app will be Berlin-based streaming platform SoundCloud, which already has its own app and whose content is already playable inside tweets. The We Are Hunted team have been experimenting with the hash tag #NowPlaying in tests for the new app - already a popular hash tag which serves as a way of telling people what you are listening to but also, like all hash tags, is interactive in that you can see what the world is listening to.
With Twitter Music, users will be able to use the hash tag to specifically see what the users they follow are listening to. Here is We Are Hunted co-founder Steven Phillips testing a tweet:
Some of the features of Twitter Music will include the ability to follow artists, listen to their music and share music with followers. And just like Twitter, the app will pick out people you may want to follow and recommend them to you, so you can constantly discover new music. The opportunity for creators of music is potentially quite vast, as Twitter is already a proven social network for marketing music, so the new Twitter Music app may bring new ways to get your music heard.
Words by Shaun Mooney
After all the work Facebook has done recently with it's OpenGraph technology - which allows services like Spotify and SoundCloud to feature heavily in news feeds - it is no surprise that Twitter is now looking to level the playing field and make the most of the massive amounts of musical content on its network.
The news of the new app follows Twitter's acquisition of music discovery platform We Are Hunted at the end of last year, which used an algorithm similar to hypem.com to create top 100 playlists for both emerging and mainstream artists. If you visit the We Are Hunted website or try to use the Spotify app, you will see that both services have been disabled, which could be a pre-cursor to Twitter readying the adapted technology from We Are Hunted for the new Twitter Music app.
The platform powering the Twitter app will be Berlin-based streaming platform SoundCloud, which already has its own app and whose content is already playable inside tweets. The We Are Hunted team have been experimenting with the hash tag #NowPlaying in tests for the new app - already a popular hash tag which serves as a way of telling people what you are listening to but also, like all hash tags, is interactive in that you can see what the world is listening to.
With Twitter Music, users will be able to use the hash tag to specifically see what the users they follow are listening to. Here is We Are Hunted co-founder Steven Phillips testing a tweet:
Test#NowPlaying @whoisgambles - Safe Side ? soundcloud.com/whoisgambles/g…
— Stephen Phillips (@huntedguy) February 2, 2013
Some of the features of Twitter Music will include the ability to follow artists, listen to their music and share music with followers. And just like Twitter, the app will pick out people you may want to follow and recommend them to you, so you can constantly discover new music. The opportunity for creators of music is potentially quite vast, as Twitter is already a proven social network for marketing music, so the new Twitter Music app may bring new ways to get your music heard.
Words by Shaun Mooney
