Twitter’s #Music app made some noise when it first arrived in April, but it has largely gone quiet. The company is taking another stab at the effort, this time with a Spotify app that surfaces music popular on Twitter.
Much like the Web interface on Twitter’s #Music site, the Spotify app features sections for Superstars, Popular, Emerging, Unearthed and Hunted. Those first three categories are self-explanatory, but Unearthed finds “hidden talent found in the tweets” and Hunted shows music that’s popular on blogs. Each of the categories can be added to Spotify as a playlist.
The #NowPlaying feature is missing from the app, presumably because it would require authorizing your own Twitter account from within Spotify.
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The app also includes featured genres: Alternative, Country, Dance, Electronic, Folk, Hip Hop, Metal, Pop, RnB and Rock, but it’s not clear whether all of these lists have been generated from Twitter data.
As you’d expect, Twitter prominently displays artists’ @usernames throughout the app and includes links to view on Twitter.com.
This doesn’t mean that Twitter has given up on its dedicated #Music app for iOS. Last week, the app got an update that added the ability to interact with tweets located within the #NowPlaying section, following a significant update that appeared in August.
Twitter’s new Spotify app plays to its strengths. I’m much more likely to make use of #Music from within Spotify than as a standalone app or website. Twitter has plenty of data that can be helpful, but that information will work best in cooperation with dedicated music services. In this sense, #Music could thrive as a powerful music data platform, similar to The Echo Nest, that provides recommendations and discovery for consumer streaming services.
➤ Twitter #Music [Spotify]
Image credit: AFP / Getty Images
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