Twitter Music
As all of us know, there are countless online music apps and platforms circulating the web, from Spotify, to Pandora, to Soundcloud, to Last.fm – all offering “unique” variations on the music listening experience. Let’s have a quick overview and then I’ll make a few valuable points.
- Spotify works with Facebook to allow friends to share music in real time, as they listen.
- Pandora lets users pick a genre, or artist, or song and create a playlist accordingly.
- Soundcloud targets the artists themselves, allowing recording and sharing, which in turn, appeals to listeners looking for the next great musician or fans seeking sneak peeks of new songs.
- Last.fm basically provides an encyclopedia-like amount of information about artists with biographies to similar musicians and popular tracks.
So it comes as no surprise, and it was only a matter of time before Twitter released its own online music player, cleverly named, “Twitter #Music.”
So what does #Music have to offer, and is it even worth using when compared to all the other listener options?
Lets check out the app.
Twitter organizes its music selection into four categories: Popular, which they describe as “new music trending on Twitter;” Emerging, “hidden talent found in the Tweets;” Suggested, “artists you might like;” and #NowPlaying, “tweeted by people you follow.”
The Popular music section is basically Twitter’s version of the iTunes top 100, or the Billboard top 100, except it illustrates the top 40 songs played on Twitter. Is less actually more? The ‘Emerging’ category promises to expose new, up and coming, talented musical groups –probably Indie-Rock bands; ‘Suggested’ is exactly what it sounds like –Twitter analyzes your tweets and follows and provides you with music accordingly (not bad for music discovery purposes); and ‘#Nowplaying’ is pretty self-explanatory.
While the idea of Twitter joining the music sharing industry is a pretty obvious decision, and the categories they break the music down into seems legitimate, and are integrated into Twitter pretty logically, it still is difficult to imagine #music making any real impact in the music sharing space, despite its already massive audience. The sad news is that Twitter has failed to offer any “new” advantages to using its application.
Popular music can be found anywhere. There are far more credible sources for “emerging” talent on sites like Pitchfork.com, or even through Spotify – and “Suggested” tracks has already been mastered by Pandora. However, possibly the biggest flaw in #music is the fact that I could really care less about what people I’m following are listening to. Facebook and Spotify work so well together because they only share information among friends, or at least acquaintances. Twitter is different in that it is a totally different type of social networking. Yes I follow my friends, but I also follow people for news, for sports analysis, for tech advances, or because they may just tweet hilarious, absurd and interesting thoughts.
But that does not mean that I am interested in what Anderson Cooper, Snookie, LeBron James, or what @crapmydadsays is listening to? Not really.
Until next time,
Kelli Richards, CEO of The All Access Group, LLC
If you were at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco last week, you probably heard Pandora Founder Tim Westergren share that SEVENTY PERCENT of their usage is through mobile venues. Yes. 70%. And having created a super-successful digital space for themselves, Pandora doesn’t see Spotify, iTunes, or any other competition eating their lunch any time soon.
