Twitter users will now be able to listen to full song tracks shared by Rhapsody subscribers through a tweet. Rhapsody becomes the first paid streaming music service to enable subscribers to share music via a tweet. No subscription is needed by followers to listen to the song.
First of its kind Twitter
Last October, Twitter came up with ‘Audio Cards’, allowing users to play back audio recordings. Through Audio Cards, Apple enabled artists to tweet a song preview and a link to the iTunes store to buy it. However, this is the first time a paid music subscription service is sharing full tracks on Twitter, says a report from CNET.
Rhapsody talked about the service during the South by Southwest Festival in Austin on Tuesday. Ethan Rudin, the Chief Financial Officer of Rhapsody International, said that with mixtapes and CDs becoming obsolete, the company was working “to find a way to bring back music discovery,” adding “We’re making music social again.”
Recently, there has been a shift from the paid ownership of the music to streaming options in the market. The market is ditching the paid ownership of music format for streaming options, which has led the technology companies and the music industry to align the consumer trend with how to pay artists, labels and tech provider’s enough money to sustain the new business model over the long-term.
Rhapsody to gain from Twitter integration
Rhapsody offers two services – on-demand subscription Rhapsody Premier costing $9.99 a month and UnRadio service, which is more limited, costing $4.99 a month. To start with, Twitter will offer its full song playback feature only in the United States, allowing American users to take advantage of Rhapsody’s full archive of 32 million tracks.
Rhapsody, which was a pioneer of the subscription streaming model, is facing increased competition from many big names such as Spotify, Beats Music (recently acquired by Apple) and from big streaming services such as Google and Amazon. In terms of number of paid subscribers, Rhapsody is still a small payers with 2.5 million members, compared to 15 million for Spotify. However, its CEO is hopeful that their alliance with Twitter will help the service gain more subscribers.
