An apparent stand-alone music offering from popular social-media company Twitter appeared online Friday, but access was limited to invited users only, with Ryan Seacrest claiming to be one of the select few to receive an invitation.
The San Francisco company did not immediately respond to a request for comment
about music.twitter.com, which arrived online after AllThingsD reported that
Twitter would launch a mobile music service Friday. The only official comment
from Twitter was confirmation Thursday night of the acquisition of We Are
Hunted, an Australian startup that developed technology to track songs'
popularity on social media.
The page at music.twitter.com offers only a Twitter logo next to a headline
reading "#music," and a sign-in button under the words "invite-only." Clicking
the sign-in button Friday on an iPad led to a page seeking authorization for
"Twitter #music web," which had the tagline "The best new music in the world
right now." Unauthorized Twitter accounts were unable to gain entrance.
Ryan Seacrest didn't seem to have any trouble, however: The "American Idol" host
claimed to be using the service Thursday night in a tweet, saying "playing with
@twitter's new music app (yes it's real!) ... there's a serious dance party
happening at idol right now." Both We Are Hunted and Twitter's verified
corporate music account, @TwitterMusic, retweeted Seacrest's claim.
The success of Oakland, Calif.-based online-radio company Pandora Media and
European import Spotify, as well as other companies such as San Francisco's
Rdio, have pushed more well-known consumer Web companies toward streaming music,
with Apple and Google both rumored to be working on streaming services.
Twitter's service is expected to offer suggestions for users based on the
Twitter accounts they follow and other information gleaned from a user's Twitter
activity, then offer related streaming songs or snippets and possibly music
videos though other services within the Twitter app, according to reports from
AllThingsD and CNET based on anonymous sources.
"It looks more like a marketing tool for artists and labels than a service for
sitting and listening to music, so my guess is that the primary impact will be
an increase in tweets from Kanye West and Justin Bieber," Pacific Crest
Securities analyst Andy Hargreaves told MarketWatch reporter Benjamin Pimentel.
