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Twitter Pre-Releases Music Recommendation App For Celebrities Only

Tweet-Music-ATwitter continues its aggressive expansion of the microblogging service into new areas of entertainment marketing and advertising opportunities. The long-rumored mobile app for music recommendations emerged last week in a limited launch for celebrity tweeters only. Taking advantage of the Coachella event, Twitter put this new app in the hands of celebrities like Ryan Seacrest. As of this weekend, the new application simply has a Web site that tells us it is “coming soon.”

According to allthingsD, the new iOS app will suggest artists and new music to the user based on the user's personal profile, social network and activity. Music fans will be able to preview and sample these tracks from within the app using services like iTunes. And video previews will be provided by Vevo.

The technology behind the app appears to be based on an acquisition that Twitter made last year of a music recommendation startup called We Are Hunted.

According to reports, the app will go wide within the next week or so. It represents another attempt by Twitter to capitalize on some of the media recommendation and conversation activity that has been going on across the microblogging network all along. Twitter has become a place where people trade both recommendations and responses to entertainment of all kinds. Its role within the TV ecosystem is widely recognized, and led Twitter to purchase one of the leading social TV metrics companies Bluefin in February.

In the case of music, however, Twitter has the opportunity not only to leverage its influence with enhanced advertising revenue from the entertainment segment, but even to get into the sales chain itself. Theoretically, sampling links within a Twitter music app could lead directly to a sale.

The app also would give Twitter a remarkable set of new metrics around the music discovery and purchase path that consumers take in this modern era of social networks, driving both. In its recent acquisitions and new offerings, Twitter clearly sees itself increasingly as both an advertising platform as well as an important listening post with unique metrics to share. 

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