After acquiring the music service We Are Hunted, Twitter is looking to launch its own standalone music app for its users. So far, users have been able to open the page music.twitter.com and have been able to see the Twitter logo, a #music hashtag, a sign in button and a message that says that the app will be released soon. On clicking the sign in button, users are taken to an authorization page but signing in to this app still hasn’t been enabled as users are met with a server error when they try to sign in.
The service could be launched this weekend as experts think that Twitter wants the launch of this music app to coincide with the Coachella Music and Arts Festival. The popularity and the buzz around this music festival could do wonders for the Twitter Music app. Twitter’s arch rival –Facebook, is also giving its music feature a facelift and Facebook has already strongly integrated with Spotify. Twitter has realized that music is very important in attracting new users to any service and is looking to duplicate the success seen by other music services like Spotify, SoundCloud, etc. with its new app.
Musicians already have some of the most popular Twitter accounts; with many pop stars boasting million of followers and the official Twitter account for the music app already has over 2 million followers. This indicates that the Twitter Music app will most definitely be hugely poplar upon its launch.
Possible features of this app
The Twitter Music app will first be released for the iOS platform and it will display Twitter’s logo unlike Vine. The icon for this app consists of a play button and the famous blue Twitter bird. Users will be able to use the guided tour feature of this app to learn how to use it for the first time. Anyone who has a Twitter account will be able to sign into this app, which could prompt new users to start using Twitter to get to the music app.
The app will recommend music to users based on their tweets, interactions and the accounts they are following. The app consists of four tabs – Suggested, Popular, Emerging and #NowPlaying. The founder of We Are Hunted – Stephen Phillips, has already been using the #NowPlaying feature in test tweets with great results. Users will be able to discover new music suggested by the app via the Suggestions tab and the suggestions will be based on their follower graph.
#NowPlaying hashtag allows users to link music files in their tweets, while the Popular tab will display songs that are currently popular on We Are Hunted. The Emerging tab will display music by new and up and coming artists. Users will be able to embed Rdio and SoundCloud audio files in tweets with this app and integration of this app with Spotify seems unlikely. Users will also be able to follow artists on Twitter directly from this app.
Will Twitter Music be able to compete with other music services?
There are many music services in existence that are extremely popular. Spotify has about 25 million users and Pandora has over 60 million users. Facebook is looking to launch a revamped version of its music feature and both Google and Apple will also be launching their own music services in the near future. How Twitter Music fares against these other music services can only be estimated after it is launched in a few days.