April 18, 2013: Microblogging site Twitter launched a new social music service today, letting people easily discover and share new music from their favorite artists. (Twitter / FoxNews.com)
Microblogging site Twitter has released a new music service that will let people hear previews of songs, log in to streaming services Rdio and Spotfiy, and “detect and surface” the most-discussed music and musicians on the Twitter site.
The songs on Twitter #music come from iTunes or the streaming websites at present, although Twitter left the door open to add other music service providers in the future.
The reaction from musicians seemed immediately positive.
“It’s epic!” gushed Tommy Lee on Twitter. Rapper Ne-Yo was equally impressed. “Twitter has some insane things in the pipeline. The new twitter #music app is big!” he wrote.
Beyond playing tunes, discovering the music that others are talking about is the service’s big focus, wrote Stephen Philips, founder of the music service We Are Hunted that Twitter recently acquired.
“if you’re interested in the songs that have been tweeted by the artists and people you follow on Twitter, you can navigate to #NowPlaying to view and listen to those songs,” Philips wrote.
“tap one of the artists you’re interested in and hit the play button to begin listening, or press play on the player to listen to all the artists.”
The Twitter #music app is available today from the Apple App Store, and a web version is online at music.twitter.com. An Android version is in the works as well, the company said.
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