Innovation of the Day: Twitter #music

The long-standing rumors have turned out to be true. 

The new Twitter Music app, which millions have been chattering about, is officially official. Well — almost — it's coming soon.

On Friday, Twitter set up an online page that was blank except for the company’s silhouetted bird logo, “#music” and a sign-in tab that, when clicked, prompted users to give the trending music application access to their account.

Despite the wording on the page changing slightly throughout the day, the takeaway message was that the standalone music feature would provide its users access to 'The best new music in the world right now'. 

Specifically, Twitter's music app will be able to scan users’ Twitter feeds and use the listening habits of users’ friends and contacts to recommend music for them to listen to — essentially giving its more than 200 million users even more to tweet about. 

As far as we're concerned, Twitter and music-sharing seem to be a match made in social media heaven — and it appears that we aren't alone in that line of thinking.

“Music is one of the most tweeted topics,” said Ted Cohen, a former label executive who is now a consultant to digital music companies. “Discovery is critical to the growth of music, and the new gatekeeper is recommendations from trusted sources.”

And while many are predicting a warm welcome for the new music app, Twitter will still have to challenge the dominance of services such as Spotify, which has already closely integrated its services with Facebook. 

However, according to the technology news site AllThingsD, Twitter's music service is only open to “influencers” like celebrities right now. So, you, non-famous person with an iPhone? Yeah, you'll have to hang tight for a week.

One of the "influencers" who has apparently been granted exclusive access is Ryan Seacrest, the “American Idol” host, who sent a pair of tweets late Thursday night describing the service:

He added:

Thanks for the tease, Ryan. Thanks a lot.

The rest of us will be waiting impatiently until universal access is granted. I suppose in the meantime we will have to whittle away the work day listening to music on Spotify or iTunes or — heaven forbid — the radio.

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