Twitter Audio cards set to shake up mobile music

Twitter and SoundCloud have teamed up to bring music to tweeters through Audio Cards, a feature that allows streaming audio and podcasts to the social network’s Android and iOS apps. The app, which is already present in iTunes and SoundCloud, works by a single tap and listeners can continue to use Twitter while streaming.

“With a single tap, the Twitter Audio Card lets you discover and listen to audio directly in your timeline on both iOS and Android devices,” Twitter said in a blog post. “Throughout your listening experience, you can dock the Audio Card and keep listening as you continue to browse inside the Twitter app. We’re launching this new audio card in partnership with third-party streaming services. The first partner for streaming on Twitter is SoundCloud.”

So far almost 60 artists and other content producers have shared music and podcasts through the Twitter Audio Card. Among these are Foo Fighters, David Guetta, Deadmau5 and Coldplay, but also include non-musical tweeters such as NASA, Washington Post, the White House and BBC World Service.

“We’re just beginning to test the Audio Card and plan to make it available to more partners and creators in the future so that many more musical artists and creators will be able to share exclusive, in-the-moment audio to millions of listeners on Twitter.”

Twitter has tried to include music to its features before with the 2013 launch of the #Music app, which after initial popularity subsequently proved unsuccessful. The #Music app worked by detecting the most popular tunes from the people the user follows, but also highlighting new artists and hits from already favoured artists.  Twitter Audio Cards seems better as let’s face it- even your friends sometimes have awful taste in music, let alone all the tweeters you don’t really know but happen to follow for one reason or another. The new feature makes it easier to filter and listen to the music as and when you so wish.

This latest development proves Twitter has not given up on its attempt to become a multimedia network, something Facebook has managed better. If successful in recruiting artists and tweeters to the Audio Cards, Twitter could become a serious alternative as a smartphone audio library.