by Kyle Mammarella
Twitter has become an increasingly important tool for artists to communicate directly with their online fanbase. Now, their tweets could be popping up in discovery apps and streaming music services.
On Tuesday, Twitter announced new deals with Gracenote and The Echo Nest that will allow third-party developers to incorporate material from Verified Accounts into their services and apps.
Jason Costa, Twitter’s developer relations manager, tweeted that these partnerships will “give music and entertainment fans the opportunity to interact with Tweets from their favorite artists, directly through the media services use every day.”
Gracenote powers music data for the world’s leading music products and services, including Apple iTunes, HTC smart phones, Ford SYNC, and Sony BRAVIA TVs. With this partnership, they will integrate Twitter Verified Accounts into their database of music and video information, which includes music and video metadata and cover art for millions of artists and albums.
“Gracenote’s broad reach across media sectors and consumer devices will amplify Twitter’s power to bring artists and fans closer together,” said Glenn Otis Brown, Twitter’s director of media business development. “This partnership opens the door for all of Gracenote’s media and device partners to weave Twitter into their core experiences.”
Rara.com – launched in December by British music firm Omnifone – will be the first online music service to feature Twitter Verified artist feeds powered by Gracenote. “rara.com is super excited to be the first music service to use the Gracenote Twitter integration to bring real time artist Twitter feeds to consumers,” said Rob Lewis, chairman of rara.com.
When a fan is listening to an artist through an online music service, Gracenote can deliver the artist’s Twitter @handle and public profile information in combination with their collection of music metadata, cover art, and song recommendations. Users can view and interact with the artist’s Tweets and engage with other fans without leaving the media service or launching another screen.
The Echo Nest, the leading intelligence platform for music content, will incorporate the immediacy of tweets directly into a recording artist’s app. The Echo Nest will connect Verified Accounts to its Rosetta Stone service, allowing individual app developers to integrate tweets from musicians. The Rosetta Stone service helps music services “speak the same language” on a data level by translating unique identifiers. App developers will be able to include tweets from a currently-playing artist alongside music, lyrics, blog posts, photos and other media from Rosetta Stone-compatible services. Australian startup Filter Squad, which makes the Discovr Music app, will be The Echo Nest’s first app developer to leverage the partnership.
“The Echno Nest’s cutting-edge music data platform will enable thousands of developers to build new ways for music fans and artists to connect on Twitter,” said Brown.
Currently, The Echo Nest powers over 200 apps and services including Spotify, iHeartRadio, Nokia, Rdio, EMI, and MOG. Its music intelligence platform offers over 5 billion data points on over 30 million songs from over 2 million artists.
Verified Accounts are given to high-profile people and those who suffer impersonation issues, or to advertisers that spend a minimum of $15,000 over a three-month period. Their verification process recently fell under scrutiny when they authenticated a fake account purportedly belonging to Rupert Murdoch’s wife. Updates now ensure that fans are getting legitimate tweets from “true” celebrities and other high-profile accounts.
There is currently no way for individuals to apply for the small blue checkmark. This seemingly puts smaller, independent artists at a disadvantage. With neither the fame nor the resources for verification, independent artists have less opportunity to leverage these technologies to connect with fans. According to Costa, however, we can expect to see Twitter announce new partnerships and expand existing ones as the pilot program begins to grow.
Kyle Mammarella is a New York based artist manager and music enthusiast.
