Twitter sings new money-making tune

Twitter has unveiled a pilot programme that will see information and tweets from musicians' Verified Accounts being distributed to developers, allowing them to integrate these into consumer apps.

Jason Costa, a Twitter employee, says in a developer blog post that Twitter has entered into partnerships with The Echo Nest, Gracenote and Rovi as part of the distribution pilot.

According to Costa, developers can access Verified Account @handles and their corresponding tweets through its new partners, and then integrate this information into their music and entertainment services.

“We expect to add more partnerships to the pilot programme, which will extend the Twitter experience to a new set of devices and applications,” Costa says.

Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx, says these partnerships extend the Twitter footprint “into the real world”.

“Twitter is desperate to find solid revenue streams and convince investors of the sustainability and growth potential of the business,” Goldstuck points out. “Entering partnerships with brands that have ready-made revenue streams is a natural way of adding to their own repertoire.”

Mark Little, principle analyst at Ovum, says the move makes Twitter a key element in music marketing and discovery, and may give the social media site another revenue-making opportunity.

According to Goldstuck, Twitter users who follow artists on the site will welcome the move. He adds that while users who avoid celebrity culture may hate it, the partnerships will make money, “so the attitude of the latter will be irrelevant”.

“Twitter has increasingly become a key channel for artists to engage directly with their fanbase,” says Little. He adds that including artists' tweets alongside their music will increase the penetration of those tweets.

Goldstuck adds that artists will potentially share in the revenue through their licensing arrangements. He points out that if Twitter does not share the revenue, the site will lose out as a result of artists deserting the network.

The Echo Nest, a music intelligence platform, says that, following its partnership with Twitter, Verified Accounts have been added to its Rosetta Stone service. Likewise, Gracenote says its entertainment platforms will feature tweets from the Verified Accounts. And Rovi says it has added the Verified Accounts to Rovi Data, its entertainment database.

Jim Lucchese, CEO of The Echo Nest, says that, in the past, there has been no simple way for developers to integrate musicians' tweets directly into apps, but this can now be done with a few lines of code. He says app developers can now design apps that include tweets from a verified Twitter account, while playing music by that artist.