Twitter Music Is a Discovery Powerhouse for Your iPhone

While there are a plethora of music services, they differentiate by focusing on various aspects of how we interact with music. Pandora is great for creating instant playlists and background music. Spotify is better when you want to hear something specific. iTunes is still there for à la carte downloading. And on and on it goes (Rdio, Xbox Music, Grooveshark, Turntable.fm, etc.), filling seemingly every niche of music culture.
There are so many services now, though, it makes you wonder: Is there any room left for a new service to stand out? Twitter Music answers with a confident yes, offering a fun music-discovery service wrapped in a gorgeous user interface.


Music and Twitter are a natural combo. The service's most popular users are musicians, by and large, and if you think about it, music is all about trends — both long- and short-term. Styles and genres help define contemporary culture, and individual artists can quickly get the whole world talking about them — with the right song (hello, Psy!).
Twitter Music (or Twitter #Music, as the company calls it) fits right into this world by presenting users with snack-size slices of what music has to offer. Very little searching and browsing is required (indeed, the search function is one of the app's weakest features) — all you need to do is tap a couple of times to immerse yourself in music that someone, somewhere is listening to.

Hey, Player

Twitter Music is a separate app from Twitter proper. It's available only for iPhone right now, although Twitter says there'll be an Android version at some point. Upon first launching the app, you can start listening immediately — you don't even have to log into Twitter, an excellent choice that adheres to one of the first rules of app development: Don't quiz the user.
At launch, the app presents you with its Popular chart — your standard Top 40, only here its Top 140. There's also Emerging for "hidden talent," Suggested for artists Twitter recommends specifically for you, and #NowPlaying for all the titles that the people you follow are sharing.


The last two only show you music if you log in with your Twitter account. By default, the app will play 30-second previews of songs imported from iTunes, but you can also connect your Spotify or Rdio accounts to listen to full tracks. Spotify requires a premium account for that, but my freshly created Rdio account had me playing tracks for free, although that was probably due to some kind of free trial.
Back to the categories. Each one shows songs arranged in a grid of small album covers, a nice visual touch borrowed from other services. Tap one, and it enlarges, growing a playback button along with a "follow" icon in the top right. The song title appears along the bottom, right above the artist's Twitter handle, which leads you to their profile if you tap.


The whole experience is slick, and you can tell the designers put a lot of thought into how things would move as you interact with them. When squares enlarge, for example, the smaller squares around it re-arrange by sliding out of the way and re-ordering themselves. It's intuitive without being too showy.
If the grid is slick, the music player is dazzling. Play a song, and the circular disc icon in the lower left comes alive, importing the album art and spinning like a record player (whatever that is). Artist info appears for a few seconds and then disappears via some pretty animation.

To control playback, just tap on the disc, and it will enlarge to show Pause/Play and Skip controls. Again, for a second — they go away pretty quickly. However, there's still a nice visual cue that you can skip to the next or previous song: Slices of other discs appear on either side, which you can tap or swipe to skip tracks. Rewinding and fast-forwarding within a song is as easy as sliding or tapping within the disc currently playing.
Controls and visual cues like this have appeared in other apps, but Twitter has wrapped them all around a very responsive player. Top marks to the designers.
On the web, everything works in a similar way, although menus and icons are rearranged to make use of the larger screen. You also don't necessarily need a paid account on the third-party services to play full tracks, although the connection to Spotify didn't work for me.

The #Discovery Experience

Twitter Music is the best music discovery app I've seen on mobile. That's because of three factors: First, it's easy and inviting to use. Second, it doesn't inundate you with too much choice. And third, suggestions from friends are self-curating.
I'll explain the last point first: Too many music apps tell you every single song your friends are listening to. It's nice to know my pal Marcel is rocking out to Kanye's latest single on Spotify, but is he listening because he really likes it, or is he just checking it out because he heard about it somewhere?
By contrast, Twitter Music's #NowPlaying chart only shows you songs the people you're following have tweeted. Clearly, it's something they're recommending and think others should hear, too. Sure, there will be plenty of artists tweeting their music to promote it, but if you're following them already, that's probably a good thing.


It's very wise that Twitter Music doesn't hit you over the head with choice. You can't really search for songs in Twitter Music, and artists appear to be limited to a single song on the service. One artist, one song — then you have to move on. If you want albums, try Myspace.
Twitter Music plays 30-second previews of songs from iTunes by default, which can lead to an ADD-fueling experience of rapidly varying music. But that isn't necessarily a bad thing. At that pace, you can get through the entire Top 140 songs in a little over an hour — not bad for capturing the zeitgeist.
Connecting a Spotify or Rdio account creates a different, more laid-back experience as you listen to full tracks. That's good for casual listening, but I think there's value in just going with iTunes. For quickly sampling Twitter's recommendations or what your friends are listening to, it's actually pretty cool.
However, the app forces you to completely log out of Spotify or Rdio to switch back to iTunes samples. I wouldn't mind if it were easier to toggle back and forth.
Twitter Music's suggestions for artists I "might like" are okay — at least, they're no better or worse than any other app's. But by the nature of its operation — letting you sample a single song from each of the recommendations — I'm much more inclined to actually listen to them.

Curtain Call

Other complaints: The search function is crap. It's slow and totally unclear what it's for. Searching for obvious titles ("Thriller" for example) doesn't bring up anything related to the artist you're looking for. It appears to be purely for searching Twitter for artist profiles.
The player also needs some kind of shuffle control. I'm not sure how this would work in every category, but it's a little nuts that the only way to listen to all the songs in the Popular section is in order, from Psy on down.
Taken as it's intended, though, Twitter Music does its job extremely well. It shows you what the world is listening to as well as what your world is listening to. It's much easier to quickly immerse yourself in new music than, say, the new Myspace. Sharing and connections are nice, but the music should be front and center, and Twitter gets that.
The big thing Twitter Music has going for it is that it's designed for mobile from the start. There are certainly plenty of mobile music apps, but Twitter struck the right balance between personal preference and following trends. In the iPod era, the choice was between listening to the same 100 songs over and over or FM radio. We've come a long way.