Coachella has passed without much noise from Twitter’s music app, which was expected to launch at the California music festival last weekend. While select artists and celebrities have been given access to the new app, non-famous users will have to wait until Friday, it seems.
A Twitter Music website went live last Friday, when it was expected that the full service would launch, and still displays a teasing ‘Coming soon’.
A ‘Sign in’ button asks for Twitter users’ permission to let the app offering “the best new music in the world right now” access who they follow, follow new people and read tweets from their timelines, which could perhaps mean that the app pulls in tweets with certain hashtags or content, or those from certain music-related accounts.
Cracking the code
This is speculative, but a dissection of the website’s code by Youssef Sarhan reveals much more about what features we can expect from the new music service. Sarhan deduced that there will be both a desktop or web version of the app, as well as a mobile app. Integration with iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud, Rdio, YouTube and Vevo is all indicated by the code, which suggests music videos, as well as audio tracks.
Sarhan also spotted code for track purchasing, artist bios and, of course, the ability to tweet from the app. He also found graphics that show an ‘Explicit’ label and an on/off switch, perhaps to disable this kind of track from playing or to enable a censored version (think Cee Lo Green’s Forget You as opposed the original expletive-titled version).
Additionally, Australian music service We Are Hunted has finally confirmed its long-rumoured acquisition by Twitter and the team are certainly contributing to the new music app. “There’s no question that Twitter and music go well together. Artists turn to Twitter first to connect with fans, and people share and discover new songs and albums every day,” reads a statement on the We Are Hunted website, which has been shut down in order to focus on creating services with Twitter.
Celebrity shout-outs
While some of us are looking at hints in the code to see what’s happening with the Twitter Music app, others are happily using it. It turns out the launch last weekend was for a select few in the music biz only, reports AllThingsD.
US TV and radio presenter Ryan Seacrest gave the game away when he tweeted about using the app last Thursday and was still enjoying it the following day, letting us know that the app highlights trending and up-and-coming artists.
Meanwhile, @TwitterMusic has retweeted positive feedback on the app from artists Wiz Khalifa, The Glitch Mob, Soft Reeds and Blake Shelton.
Moving on from these ‘influencers’, it’s expected that Twitter Music will be available for the average Joe this Friday, though it will more than likely be for iOS users only.
