Twitter #music app doesn't live up to the hype

Twitter recently launched its music discovery app called #music for the web and iPhone. The app is designed to help Twitter users find music that's popular on Twitter as well as find music based on the bands you follow on the service. The service claims that it "will change the way people find music."

The web app has five options for discovering music including Popular, Emerging, Suggested, #NowPlaying and Me. The Popular option shows you what's popular on Twitter right now. Emerging plays artists who are hidden gems that are rising in popularity. Suggested is just that – suggestions of artists you might like. #NowPlaying features music that's played by people you follow. Finally, Me plays music based on the bands you follow. The downside? This app only plays clips of music. In order to play full songs, you have to sign in to Spotify or Rdio, and you must have premium accounts with those services.

The iPhone app's design is polished and user-friendly. The pages are made up of a grid of artists and songs. Strangely (though understandably), the app refers to artists by their Twitter handles instead of their actual names. This app is integrated with iTunes, and again, you'll only hear a preview. Same as with the web app, to listen to full songs, you must have a premium Spotify or Rdio account.

With both apps, you can go to the Twitter pages of the artist or band to see what they follow and listen to.

In summary, this is a great way to discover music, as it claims, but is not built for "listening." Although you can log in to your accounts mentioned above to listen, this seems like an unnecessary step when you could just do that from the get-go and bypass Twitter #music altogether. To be honest, aside from reviewing the app, I probably won't use it. I'm a little disappointed that all the app offers is discovery. I'll stick to Pandora and Spotify for my music streaming needs.

Photo courtesy Rosaura Ochoa, via Flickr.