Twitter is expected to come up with a new music service after the acquisition of We Are Hunted, a music discovery site. Some of the reports expect the new service from the Micro-blogging site will offer personalized recommendations on music through its own dedicated app.
Confirming the acquisition, We Are Hunted told “there’s no question that Twitter and music go well together”. Some reports also suggest that Twitter actually acquired We Are Hunted in 2012, which highlights that the company has been working on the app for quite some time now.
The music discovery site also said that it is shutting down, but users will still be able to submit their email address or usernames to download their favorites. We Are Hunted was started in 2007, in Australia, by Stephen Phillips and Richard Slatter, with Michael Doherty as a founding partner.
We Are Hunted create a kind of Billboard chart for online music, social media, monitoring popular songs on blogs, BitTorrent and message boards.
The hashtag #music is also featured on the newly-launched music.twitter.com.
The new app from Twitter was also confirmed by a tweet from the US celebrity host Ryan Seacrest on Thursday. The tweet read “”playing with @twitter’s new music app (yes it’s real!)… there’s a serious dance party happening at idol right now”.
Last month, a report from CNET revealed that Twitter has acquired We Are Hunted, but neither company confirmed the news at that time. The soon to be launched music service is expected to come as an iOS app and will include Suggested Music, a #NowPlaying section that tracks the hashtag among followers, Popular and Emerging.
The Micro-blogging site has gained about 200 million users worldwide in just seven years and account for an average of 400 million short messages or tweets daily. The latest move from Twitter is aimed at gaining substantially from the rapid growth in the music streaming business.
According to a trade body BPI, the streaming industry is now worth £49m to record labels in the UK. Music identification apps Shazam and SoundHound have more than 300 million and 130 million registered users, respectively.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) also recently entered into a deal with the biggest music label Universal to design an internet radio service, using its iTunes platform, similar to that of Pandora.
