Rumor has it that Twitter has dipped its feet in the pool of music discovery with their recent acquisition of We Are Hunted, one of our favorite Spotify apps. According to CNET, the company that made micro-blogging a household name intends to use We Are Hunted’s technology to create a brand-new standalone music app under the name Twitter Music, and plans to release a version for iOS devices as early as the end of this month.
Neither Twitter nor We Are Hunted has confirmed CNET’s report. There, are, however, some clues to consider that may confirm the story.
First, a very timely “not available at the moment” message plastered on the We Are Hunted official website. And the founders page that used to be on their website is no longer available.
Test#NowPlaying @whoisgambles – Safe Side ♪ soundcloud.com/whoisgambles/g…
— Stephen Phillips (@huntedguy) February 2, 2013
Second, the official We Are Hunted twitter page has not been updated in a while. Instead we have this tweet (above) to go on, marked “Test,” posted by Stephen Phillips, We Are Hunted co-founder. This alone is nearly enough to prove CNET’s claim that SoundCloud will be the music streaming service of choice linked to Twitter Music.
Prior to said acquisition, We Are Hunted was a music aggregation tool designed to scour pages on the Internet for the most popular songs and present it in a pretty neat package, complete with music streaming, playlist creation and content sharing capabilities. Twitter reportedly plans to utilize We Are Hunted’s unique searching technology with an app that recommends music based on the artists you follow, streams songs that are #NowPlaying, and groups popular and emerging musicians for easier discovery. Users apparently don’t need a Twitter account to use the app once it is released, which can pave the way to new Twitter sign-ups.
The music discovery industry is currently dominated by the likes of Pandora and Spotify, each with millions of active users. Facebook just recently got in the game themselves with a planned revamp of their music feed, just as there’s also a rumor that Google plans to provide their own music streaming service as well. Only time will tell if Twitter has enough prowess to get its users to consider their standalone music app necessary.
