Hot off the presses, Twitter #music has finally gone public, and we can all stop hating Wiz Khalifa and Alt-J just a little bit for getting there before we did. With Twitter charts based on trending music and recommendations sourced from your follows, Twitter #music aims to reinvent music discovery.
Is it everything we’ve been waiting for and just as good as all the famous music people have been saying? We’ll try it out!
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Hashtag Discovery
I’ll admit it, I stayed with MySpace long after it stopped being cool so I could follow bands and musicians. MySpace seemed to have that down pretty well, at least for a while, but Twitter #music is trying to become your resource for artist-watching. If you remember, and I know it was a long time ago, what it was like to follow your favorite artists from your MySpace profile page and check in with their new tracks, you might have some flashbacks when using Twitter #music — but this works a lot better.
That’s my profile, with new songs from the artists I follow. The other profile is for one of my favorite bands, and I can listen to the music they like.
All of the artists you’re following are going to show up on your profile. If you’ve got a bunch, it’s going to rain tunes; if you’re only following one or two bands, though, it’s not a fun place to be. Tap an artist to listen to their latest track, but you’re only getting one song. Then Twitter #music moves on to the next artist you’re following. The downside is if there aren’t anymore recent tracks for your fave artists, the player just stops.
The Popular screen, likely to be the most trod-upon in the app, features new music currently trending around Twitter. You’ll probably recognize most of the names here, even if you haven’t heard the tracks yet. This is still a good place to stop in a music discovery app, because you’ll hear the newest stuff from the biggest artists, even if you’re already familiar with their past releases.
Popular and Emerging tracks come from the music that’s trending on Twitter right now.
Next is Emerging tracks, those songs and artists that are starting to trend on Twitter but aren’t as acclaimed — well, not yet — as what you’ll find over in the Popular screen. I only listen to the sort of music that’s created by three bearded hipsters and a dog playing the saw harp, and even I was only familiar with a few of these. This is a great place to hit if you want to stay at the cusp of fresh music.
Your Suggested tracks come from artists Twitter #music thinks you might like. The list isn’t endless, but I bet the more info the app gets on your preferences, the more recommendations you’ll have on deck and the better they’ll get. As it was, just opening the app for the first time, Twitter #music pretty much had me dead to rights. There were a few artists there that I was really into — though you don’t want too much overlap of stuff you’re already listening to from a music discovery app — and a bunch of stuff I’d never heard but could really dig.
The Suggested and #NowPlaying tracks all depend on who you follow.
The #NowPlaying tracks are songs tweeted by people you follow. This isn’t trending music or anything, so you may get a funky mix of #NowPlaying music, depending on your followers. You can control what you hear, to an extent, by following artists and, more to the point, music blogs. If no one you follow tweets music, your #NowPlaying playlist is going to be pretty bare.
Premium Accounts
To hear full songs, you’ll need to log in with either a Spotify Premium or Rdio Unlimited account. Otherwise, you’ll just get snippets of each song, which is a bummer. Okay, being perfectly honest, if the song is in your iTunes library, you can totally listen to it in Twitter #music, but if you already have the track, that defeats the purpose of using a music discovery app, anyway — just go listen to it in iTunes.
I get why you need a paid account somewhere else to listen to songs in Twitter #music, but the app is going to be a lot less fun if you’re not premium. Even without full tracks, you’ll still be able to tweet music, and the interface makes it super simple to do that. If you’re browsing the popular or emerging artists and you hear a sample you like, you can always shuffle over to iTunes and pick the song up there, too. It’s just important to know that Twitter #music isn’t self-contained and relies on paid services to function at full steam.
The Awesome Music Player
If you do have a paid account to go with Twitter #music and are using it as a music player, it’s actually pretty nice. When you tap a track, it starts spinning in the lower left corner, and tap the disc to view the music player. The track continues to spin, and you’ll tap the album artwork in the center to pause or resume playing. Swipe left and right to move to the next and previous tracks. There’s a pretty sweet equalizer at the bottom to control volume, too.
I really like the music player, and it’s super simple to tweet a song I like.
In the upper right is a tweet icon; tap that to tweet your #NowPlaying track. Whatever you’re currently spinning is automatically fed into your tweet, and you can add any comments or music protips you want. If you weren’t fast enough off the mark, though, and the song switched before you could tweet it up, tap the disc icon above the iOS keyboard to view your #NowPlaying track’s artwork. Hit the X to get rid of that one, and swipe backwards to find just the one you want.
Final Thoughts
Twitter has created a great app for music discovery here. I’m always looking for something new to listen to, but I never know where to turn. I’ll admit to stalking my friends on various music services in the hopes of catching on to something awesome I haven’t heard before, so Twitter #music is just what I’ve been looking for.
Not only can I find what my friends, who I already trust about these things, are listening to, but I can also find the new stuff that Twitter at large is snagging, music my circle may not have heard yet. While I’m doing all of that, I can stay on top of the newest tracks from my favorite artists and share the songs that I’m jamming to. Twitter #music is the full music discovery package.