(AllHipHop News) According to reports by Cnet.com, popular microblogging site Twitter is about to join other tech heavyweights Apple, Spotify, and Pandora in bringing music to your mobile devices.
At some point over the last 6 months Twitter bought We Are Hunted, one of the leading music discovery services, and the social media site is planning to use We Are Hunted’s technology to create its own application known as “Twitter Music.”
Users will be able to use Twitter Music to find artists and songs to listen to based on personalized recommendations. The user will then be able to stream the song on SoundCloud right from the app.
Twitter Music will have four tabs: Suggested, Popular, Emerging, and #NowPlaying. “Suggested” will recommend songs based on Twitter accounts a person follows. “Popular” will display trending songs on We Are Hunted. “Emerging” will track rising artists. “#NowPlaying” will show songs tweeted by people you follow when they include that hashtag.
Twitter is the latest social media site to move into music. In 2011, Facebook partnered with Spotify to launch integrated streaming, and Google reportedly signed a deal with Warner Music recently to create a subscription music service. Facebook also recently revamped its News Feed again which now provides a more prominent section that shows the music you listen to.
This could be big move for Twitter which is already the tenth most used website in the world. It may also be a boom for artists who have another way of promoting and sharing their music on a site with over 500 million users. There’s a good chance that musicians can turn those new Twitter followers/listeners into consumers.
A Nielson Entertainment report released last week at SXSW revealed that “Digital Fans” (consumers who get most of their entertainment news from smartphones and tablets) spend on average $363/year on music purchases including buying digital tracks, albums, merchandise, and tickets for live events.
Nielsen Entertainment executive David Bakula estimates that there is also approximately $450 million to $2.68 billion in revenue growth for the music streaming industry currently dominated by Spotify, Rhapsody, and Pandora.
The Twitter Music application may be available on iOS as early as the end of March.
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