Not at all surprising, given that this news was leaked all the way back in October, but pretty disappointing: Twitter’s #Music app is officially dead.
The company announced, via a tweet, that the app is going to be removed from the app store, and will no longer work after April 18th, which, perhaps not coincidentally, is the app’s one-year anniversary:
Later this afternoon, we will be removing Twitter #music from the App Store. If you have the app, it will continue to work until April 18.
— Twitter Music (@TwitterMusic) March 21, 2014
Twitter’s #Music app ultimate point seemed to be to get music that artists themselves recommended on Twitter.
It’s #NowPlaying feature allowed users to see the songs that had been tweeted by the artists and people they follow on Twitter. Another feature, called Suggested, analyzed the artists a user followed, in order to recommend songs it thinks they might like.
Users could also listen to music from artists that other artists follow. For example, if someone was following rapper Wiz Khalif, users could then search his name, then tap one of the artists Khalif is following and then start listening to their music.
It allowed subscribers of Rdio and Spotify to log in to their accounts and stream full tracks through Twitter. The app premiered right after Twitter bought music discovery service We Are Hunted.
The app was initially popular, reaching the number 6 for overall free app downloads in the App Store, but it quickly fell off. As of the end of August, it was ranked at #1672 in the App Store, according to Onavo, while App Annie has it at number 267 in iTunes. So, yeah, it was not exactly lighting up the charts.
The writing on the wall was there when Kevin Thau, who was the Head of the #Music app, abruptly left Twitter to join Biz Stone’s mysterious Jelly startup only a month after the app debuted.
According to the reports from last year, the app was developed in isolation and was never fully integrated into Twitter.
The failure of the #Music app does not mean that Twitter is going to be giving up on the music space. In fact, the company made it very clear in another tweet that there is more music integration to come:
We continue to experiment with new ways to bring you great content based on the music activity we see every day on Twitter.
— Twitter Music (@TwitterMusic) March 21, 2014
In September of last year, the company hired Bob Moczydlowsky, the former senior vice president of product and marketing at Topspin Media, as its new head of music. In his new role, Moczydlowsky was put in charge of handling music partnerships, as well as hiring two new deputies who will handle artist relations.
Last month Twitter entered into a partnership with music industry firm 300 Entertainment in order to gain deeper insights into how users interact with music on the site.
So, there’s plenty more in Twitter’s pipeline, despite the failure of #Music.
(Image source: showlove.co)
