By Barry Eitel
SAN FRANCISCO
Twitter announced late Thursday that it will allows users to stream audio embedded in tweets.
The favorite social media outlet for musicians and other celebrities is finally going to marry its service to music.
“The world’s most influential musicians and media producers already share unique audio content through Twitter every day,” Twitter wrote in a blog post. “We’re introducing a new way for you to experience audio directly on Twitter.”
Twitter has long attempted to harness the power of music. It’s a natural fit considering how often the subject is discussed on the site, often by the actual musicians.
The company worked on a standalone music app for some time, releasing one to much fanfare in 2013. The #Music app was set to showcase songs trending on the site, but its popularity fell probably because it was pretty passive in providing new music. The company shut the app down this past spring.
Twitter is calling its new in-app music experience Audio Card, and it comes to both iPhone and Android smartphones. Users can play audio embedded in tweets, and the music continues to play as they surf around the rest of the Twitter app.
“With a single tap,” Twitter continued in its post, “the Twitter Audio Card lets you discover and listen to audio directly in your timeline on both iOS and Android devices. Throughout your listening experience, you can dock the Audio Card and keep listening as you continue to browse inside the Twitter app.”
Twitter is exploring a different tactic for audio than it did for images or video. While users looking at images obviously stay engaged with the specific tweet in which the media is embedded, music is different. The natural impulse is to click play on a track, listen and then move on – as opposed to staring at a media player – and Twitter is now embracing this engagement.
www.aa.com.tr/en
