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Tag: twitter music

  • Twitter Music Is Dead: App Removed, Service Goes Dark on April 18th

    In news that is unlikely to affect most of you, Twitter has decided to give up on Twitter Music, the company’s trending music app that they launched last April. It’s been nearly a year since Twitter Music went live to the masses after a lengthy beta period (with celebrity testers), and in that year the app has failed to pick up much of a user base.

    Twitter Music took to Twitter to announce that they would be removing the app from the App Store and that the service would officially shut down on April 18th.

    At its core, Twitter Music was a music discovery app that allowed users to find new music based on their own Twitter activity and the popular activity of others. At launch, Twitter said that it would “change the way people find music.”

    A big part of the service was the #NowPlaying feature, which saw Twitter surfacing tracks that people were currently tweeting about–an attempt to get the Twitterverse listening together. Twitter Music also recommended songs and artists based on your Twitter data. Once you found a song you wanted to stream, Twitter Music would let you do so via Rdio or Spotify, as well as iTunes previews.

    Twitter Music was engendered through Twitter’s acquisition of music discovery app We Are Hunted.

    And now it’s no more.

    Nobody should be too surprised by this development, considering Twitter has been thinking about shutting it down for a while. After a strong debut, Twitter Music plunged from the app charts and everyone basically forgot about it.

    In the end, Twitter Music will be seen as a misstep for a company that doesn’t make too many missteps. To be honest, it felt like Twitter gave up on Twitter Music around the same time the rest of us did. I’d believe the Twitter Music team, however, when they say that they are still looking at ways to highlight the activity surrounding music on the network. There’s simply too much music-related content on Twitter to not utilize it.

  • Jelly, Biz Stone’s Mysterious Startup, Poaches COO from Twitter

    While Twitter co-founder Biz Stone’s new startup Jelly has been light on the specifics (what the hell is it, really?), it has been heavy on snatching talent as of late.

    According to All Things D, we can now say hello to Jelly’s new Chief Operating Officer – and it’s Twitter’s Kevin Thau.

    Thau’s most recent project at Twitter was the newly-launched Twitter Music, the company’s new standalone music discovery app that was built out of the acquisition of We Are Hunted. But Thau has been at Twitter much longer than the beginning of that project, once managing Twitter’s mobile engineering and design teams. After that, Thau became VP of Business Development.

    Earlier this week, Biz Stone came out and announced the identity of his Jelly co-founder and CTO. It’s Ben FInkel, who once served as the New Users Experience manager on Twitter’s Growth Team. Another former Twitter employee, Vítor Lourenço, left Twitter and is now consulting the folks over at Jelly. With today’s news that Thau is leaving Twitter to work on Jelly, that makes three high-profile poaches by Biz Stone and his new startup.

    But once again, what is Jelly? Details are scarce, but we know that it will be a mobile-focused, free service of some kind.

    “News of Jelly emerged unexpectedly early so I’ll wait a bit to share more about the team. In the meantime, I’ll say this. Jelly will be for everybody, it will be developed first and foremost for mobile devices, and it will be free. But, it won’t be ready for a while,” said Stone, when announcing the startup.

  • Twitter Music Launches to the Masses

    Twitter Music Launches to the Masses

    After a week or so spent as the plaything of a select famous few, Twitter is now releasing their standalone music discovery app Twitter Music to the masses. At launch, the app is available on the web and on iOS only. It’s also only available in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand right now. Twitter promises that further expansion is coming, including an Android app.

    Ok, so what is Twitter Music? At its core, it’s a music discovery app that lets users find songs based on their own Twitter activity and the popular activity of others. Twitter says that it will “change the way people find music.”

    “It uses Twitter activity, including Tweets and engagement, to detect and surface the most popular tracks and emerging artists,” says Twitter. “It also brings artists’ music-related Twitter activity front and center: go to their profiles to see which music artists they follow and listen to songs by those artists. And, of course, you can tweet songs right from the app.”

    The app is broken down into four major sections: Popular, Emerging, #NowPlaying, and Suggested. All of them are about discovery. The Popular and Emerging sections simply display music that is, well, popular and emerging on the network. Pretty simple. The Suggested tab puts Twitter’s algorithms to work, recommending songs and artists using your Twitter data – who you follow, and who the people you follow follow. #NowPlaying lets you play music that has been tweeted out by people in your network who have used the #NowPlaying hashtag. That hashtag has been a popular one on Twitter for years, but Twitter Music is finally making it useful.

    Once you find a song you want to listen to, you have a few options. If you have a Spotify or Rdio account, you can log into those and play the full song using your subscription-based service. If not, you can still listen to previews of track using iTunes. Early rumors of Twitter Music said that it wouldn’t launch with integration into a full subscription-based streaming service, but I’m sure we can all agree that it’s great that those were wrong.

    Twitter says that they will “continue to explore and add other music service providers.”

    The applets you follow artists, view their tracks, and tweet out what you’re listening to. The latter is especially important for the service as a whole, as the #NowPlaying aspect of the app is probably the most interesting.

    Here’s what it looks like when you’re playing a track. Note the tweet button at the top right:

    “Twitter and music go great together. People share and discover new songs and albums every day. Many of the most-followed accounts on Twitter are musicians, and half of all users follow at least one musician. This is why artists turn to Twitter first to connect with their fans — and why we wanted to find a way to surface songs people are tweeting about,” says We Are Hunted’s Stephen Philips. Twitter recently acquired We Are Hunted, a music discovery app, and they’re the ones who helped build Twitter Music.

    As of this morning, Twitter Music is not yet up and running. The web app still says “coming soon” and the iOS ap has yet to appear in the App Store. But it will launch later today. We’ll let you know when that happens.

    UPDATE: It’s live.

  • You’re Not Famous Enough to Play with Twitter Music Yet

    It turns out, reports that Twitter was launching their new music discovery service Twitter Music this weekend were true, and also not true.

    Twitter Music is available – but only for a handful of top influencers. We noted earlier that Ryan Seacrest was already tweeting about it – and now it’s clear why. Twitter is only letting a small number of celebs and other big Twitter personalities “test” the new app for now. And of course “test” means “tweet about and generate buzz for,” as Mr. Seacrest’s involvement would indicate.

    Peter Kafka at All Things D reports that us common folk aren’t going to be able to get a look at Twitter Music until sometime next week. Bummer.

    What we know about Twitter Music so far is that it’s a music discovery app that suggests music based on a number of signals – including who you follow. Users of Twitter Music will be able to stream songs via Soundcloud and iTunes – but no full-streaming service partners like Spotify are expected at launch. Also included in the package is a global trend tracker, which allows Twitter Music users to know what’s popular and playing in real time.

    For now, we just have a music.twitter.com site that teases the service, and has a Twitter sign-in button. But it doesn’t function yet.

    Expect more of this^ over the next few days.

  • Twitter Music Launching Soon, Ryan Seacrest Is Already Playing With It

    Twitter is poised to release its rumored standalone music app, Twitter Music, sometime this weekend according to sources.

    First rumored back in early March, the Twitter Music app will launch as a music discovery app which suggests artists and tracks based on a number of signals – including who you follow. User of Twitter Music will be able to stream songs via Soundcloud and iTunes, Early reports indicated that no full-streaming services like Spotify would be integrated upon launch.

    Alongside the recommended music tab, users will also see a #NowPlaying area that surfaces popular music across the Twitter network.

    Sources told All Things D that it could launch today, on Friday, April 12th. But another source said that a weekend launch at Coachella was more likely.

    Either way, we know it’s close. Ryan Seacrest is tweeting about it – and the official Twitter Music account is retweeting him.

    The app is partly the work of the team from music discovery app We Are Hunted, which was purchased by Twitter in the past 6 months but only confirmed the acquisition on Thursday.

    “While we are shutting down wearehunted.com, we will continue to create services that will delight you, as part of the Twitter team,” they said on their official site.

    But it appears that they hand a big hand in Twitter Music.

  • Twitter to Launch Standalone Music Discovery App Born Out of Recent Acquisition [REPORT]

    Twitter to Launch Standalone Music Discovery App Born Out of Recent Acquisition [REPORT]

    Twitter is working on a standalone music app that could be released on iOS as early as the end of March, according to a report from CNET.

    The app will reportedly be called “Twitter Music” and will be built upon technology from music discovery service We Are Hunted, which was purchased by Twitter within the past six months.

    The barebones function of Twitter Music will be discovery. Apparently, the app will recommend music based on signals such as who the user follows on Twitter. The music will be powered by SoundCloud, and if that’s not available the app directs users to an iTunes preview. As of right now, no full streaming services like Spotify are a part of Twitter Music.

    Digging deeper, the app consists of a few other tabs. Alongside the suggested music that pulls personalized recommendations based on a user’s Twitter activity, there is also a #NowPlaying tab that will show you tweets from people you follow who tweet using the #NowPlaying hashtag (this is a fun little way to incorporate an old and popular hashtag). We can see this in action, thanks to a tweet from We Are Hunted co-founder Stephen Phillips:

    Other tabs include “Popular” and “Emerging” which will give users access to trending and up-and-coming artists and songs, respectively.

    According to the report, Twitter suggests that you sign in via Twitter when you open the standalone Twitter Music app, but it’s not required. Of course, personalized recommendations won’t work unless you’re signed in to the Twitter graph.

    Back in January, Twitter launched Vine, a six-second video app born out of another acquisition. Although Vine is Twitter’s app and works seamlessly with Twitter, Vine isn’t actually branded with the Twitter name and logo. According to the report, Twitter Music will be a Twitter app through and through.