Recent speculation may be about Apple getting into the music streaming game, but Twitter unleashed a little surprise for iPhone owners on Thursday when it officially released Twitter Music in the App Store.
So far, Twitter Music integrates Spotify, Rdio, and iTunes into its functionality. Users with Spotify and Rdio accounts can listen to entire tracks that the app suggests, but otherwise they'll be limited to short iTunes previews. Speaking as someone with no account at either of the first two sites, Twitter Music wasn't particularly useful to me as a streaming service. As an engine that can promote discovery, though, it has some interesting, if unfulfilled, ideas behind it.
The new app occupies a strange kind of space between music discovery/suggestion apps and more traditional programs such as Pandora or Spotify. It generates results based on activity and popularity on Twitter, which could potentially be interesting in and of itself, but until more people start spending time with it you can only get so much out of the four basic categories.
Right now, Twitter Music users can search through Popular, Emerging, Suggested, and #NowPlaying music. Popular is pretty self-explanatory, while Emerging music suggests tracks people are tweeting but that are still a tier or two below whatever's trending. The usefulness of the last two, however, depends a lot more on how much you engage with Twitter, in addition to other external factors.
If you use the app to sign in with your Twitter account, you can check out the Suggested music feature. This basically sifts through all the artists you follow on Twitter and recommends music to you based on that information. If you're like me, though, and you don't follow any musicians, the feature may as well be useless, because you won't get any results.
The #NowPlaying feature, though, I think has potential. It recommends music based on tracks tweeted out by the accounts you follow on Twitter. Considering that the majority of people I follow aren't necessarily individuals I've met or see/talk to every day, this could be a cool new way to explore music you wouldn't find on your own, or even through your "real life" friends. If your followers tweet out links to music, or regularly update accounts like This Is My Jam, you could be in for some pleasant surprises. If not, well, you get the idea.
You can search for artists, too, but this will simply play music by other artists that they follow, so it's not necessarily relaying music you might like based off the search. I typed in "The Flaming Lips," who happened to follow about 31 other musicians, and Twitter Music gave me a track suggestion for each one. Then I searched for "Kanye West" and, fittingly, received only one track suggestion: Kanye West. The man doesn't follow anyone except Kim Kardashian. This feature depends entirely on a musician's engagement with Twitter.
And that really brings us to the heart of the matter, here. The app seems like a way for Twitter to drive more user engagement in some interesting ways, through the lens of music. Use the app, and you're more likely to read more tweets, click more links, follow more Twitter accounts, and tweet more posts yourself. If it's embraced by the community then it stands a good chance of becoming an interesting, unique peak into what makes the social network tick. As Twitter adds music service providers outside of Rdio and Spotify, it'll attract even more users. But ultimately, you get what you put in, and it'll be interesting to see how it grows from here.
