Twitter Kicks Ass With Music App Launch

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Twitter launched a new music service today for its Web and mobile versions, and if you’re even remotely fond of music, it’s fucking awesome. The app—available at https://music.twitter.com as well as the Apple App Store—helps you find your favorite tunes based on Twitter trends and artists you and your friends follow. There are tons of choices, and they update with a simple screen refresh. Some of the artists’ popular songs are available for an extended preview, you can Tweet links to them or open iTunes directly to their popular albums. I seriously could spend hours playing with this app.

When landing on Twitter Music, I immediately arrived at the “Popular” page, which shows which music is trending across Twitter. Artists such as Pink, Pitbull, Linkin Park and Taylor Swift are highlighted on the page, along with their Twitter handles. By clicking on any of their icons, I’m treated to one of their hit songs, as well a link to the artists’ iTunes page and another that opens up a Tweet listing the artist’s name, song title and iTunes link. I can write in whatever additional comments I want… 140 characters or less, or course.

But maybe I want to browse some more eclectic artists. I mean, I hear songs from Paramore and Maroon 5 all the time. Sometimes it’s fun to browse some new music and see what’s out there, right? So I simply click the “Emerging” tab and get a whole new page of bands to discover. I may have never heard of the likes of The Cat Empire, Nina Nesbitt or Egyptian Hip Hop without this feature. Pretty sweet.

Because I tend to like what I like when it comes to music, though, my favorite parts of the new Twitter Music app are the custom features. The “Suggested” tab lists artists Twitter thinks I may like based on who I follow and my tweets. And its estimates aren’t too off-base. Any time I open a page and see Paul McCartney’s still gorgeous Beatle eyes looking at me I can’t help but giggle, and to think a computer program could predict anyone likes both Bette Midler and Snoop is pretty impressive.

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Twitter Music also allowed me to link to every artist I follow with the “Artists You Follow” tab—freaking awesome. So now I can easily listen to “Can’t Touch This,” then tweet about @MCHammer in one quick swoop.

Although it’s just too soon to reap the benefits, the “#NowPlaying” tab shows all artists who have recently been tweeted by people I follow. Since Twitter music just launched a few hours ago, the only artist in my #NowPlaying tab is Sir McCartney, based on my earlier tweet. But once more people start using the app and tweeting from it, this option is gonna be the bomb.

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Sounds great so far, right? And that’s not the end of Twitter Music. Rdio and Spotify subscribers can log into their accounts to listen to full tracks available on those services, allowing Twitter Music to become their primary Internet radio source.  According to Twitter, it plans to add other music services in the future.