This new app is going to use Twitter to find the most popular and emerging artists and tracks. It will work similar to Myspace, where you can click on an artist's profile and find out all other artists that they follow. You can then play their tracks directly or tweet them.
Twitter has tied up with iTunes, Spotify and Rdio for this service. When you are exploring the app, you can only listen to previews from iTunes, however you can sign into your Spotify or Rdio account to listen to full tracks. Twitter has plans to tie up with more music service providers in future.
A new hash-tag #NowPlaying has been created that can be used by Twitterati to find out about songs that people and artists they follow are tweeting. In the app, #NowPlaying appears as an option to which you can navigate.
The app also allows you to discover new and emerging artists and you can follow them directly through their profiles, as well as listen to their top tracks that are available.
Similar to Twitter, where you can look who is following whom, you can navigate your way on the map easily to discover other artists that may be similar to ones you like.
Initially, Twitter allowed a few popular artists to test the app and the response was overwhelmingly appreciative.
A BBC report (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22199692) states that it takes Apple's experiment with Ping forward, and where as the late Steve Jobs' project was shelved last year in September, Twitter's new app looks promising.
At present available in US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand and only on iTunes and as a web version, according to Twitter's Stephen Phillips, it will be expanding to cover Android as well as more countries soon.
The sheer popularity of Twitter both among artists and avid followers, where half of all users on Twitter follow at least one music artist, the app seems like a practical next move for Twitter to expand its reach. It is also good news for established artists as they can use this new platform to instantly popularise their fresh tracks by tweeting about it and hoping for re-tweets from their followers.
It also gives an opportunity to new and emerging artists to be noticed by a massive global audience if they could muster up a good enough number of followers for tweets and re-tweets of their tracks; once again establishing the need for a thoroughly planned social media strategy on their part.
Shubit S., EpikMusicVideos
20/06/2013