People generally love sharing things, and Twitter has made broadcasting updates to anyone who cares to care on what you’re doing, wearing, reading, commenting on, eating, using, etc. a breeze; in 140 characters or less, even. It’s only natural to see so many users also share which music they are listening to at any given moment on Twitter, as this has been a fairly popular use of status feeds on other social networking and communication services for years (Facebook, Skype and Windows Live Messenger leap to mind).
Here’s a number of ways to use Twitter for just about anything related to music:
* Blip.fm – dubbed the “Twitter for Music” when we first reviewed the service, it got its own API in late 2008. Blip.fm enables anyone to start their own music station and broadcast tunes to Twitter and other status sharing services where people can interact with the choice of music.
* Twiturm does much of the same – upload music and share it with all your Twitter followers in a heartbeat. Intended for artists who want to share their own music, hence the name (”Twitter Ur Music”).
* Twisten.fm – Escape Media Group linked its music discovery service Grooveshark and its URL shortening service TinySong with an application that crawls Twitter for messages about music (and “then you listen to them”).
* Twt.fm (anyone see a naming pattern here?) – type in an artist, track, and your twitter username. Twt.fm will then generate a track page for you using your twitter page design and you’ll be able to tweet it to your followers.
* Tweetj – include a #tweetj tag in your tweets when you’re listening to music and it’ll be posted to a public playlist. The playlist allows you to discover new music and immediately purchase tracks on Amazon.
* A similar service is WiiZZZ (yes, that’s the actual name) – it allows you to listen to entirely random songs that have been posted and shared by Twitter users on any given day.
* Play Twitter – allows you to easily play mp3 files directly on Twitter or Identi.ca. MP3 links will automatically become playable right on the page.
* Tra.kz – this “URL shortener for all things music” was cooked up by MixMatchMusic and does exactly what you suspect it would do and therefore competes with the above mentioned TinySong and alternatives like Song.ly.
* TwittyTunes – Firefox extension that comes with another Firefox extension, Yahoo’s FoxyTunes, and allows you to instantly post your currently playing songs to Twitter with just a click.
* LastTweet – enables you to embed a widget with your latest tweets into your Last.fm profile
* Update: LastFMLoveTweet is a mashup that automatically pushes a tweet from you carrying a track’s artist and name that you’ve indicated as a tune you loved on Last.fm
* Update: Tweekly.fm will get your weekly artist data from Last.FM and send a tweet to your profile listing your top 3 listened artists for the week plus their respective play counts.
* Update: this site tracks the top music being listened to on Twitter
Also worth checking out, even if not directly related to Twitter: Nabbit (”connects your cellphone to your radio”), MuseBin (music news and reviews in 140 characters, like Blippr but music only) and Twones (the “social music feed”).
Did I miss any other apps, tools and websites worth noting?
Share them in the comments and I’ll be happy to update the post.
Update: it’s not Twitter-specific, but you can use Favtape to put together your own playlists / online mixtapes and share them on Twitter.
Hey Robin! ça va?
Only 17 days to the conference…. Are you ready? We will have a couple of cream pies for you…
@robin Amazing list. Great job compiling the info.
I was wondering – do you guys think that there would be any value in having twitter alerts “read” to you via phone?
@cash may be a niche, niche, niche combo – a lot of work and tough to scale. just an opinion.
Well, scaling really depends on how it’s done – as for the niche aspect of things though, that may be a good point. Anyone else agree with DJ?
You should take a look at http://songraptor.com
@cash sounds like a good idea
RT @cash sounds like a good idea
is there an automated way to tweet your most recent listened or favorited songs from last.fm?
You can setup friendfeed to tweet any last.fm favorites or loved tracks.
Yes. Setup a Yahoo pipe that fetches your loved tracks and pairs them with their YouTube video then shortens the URL, then feed that through TwitterFeed
Twitter was the best place to look to find links to U2’s leaked album.
Thanks for the helpful article! A lot of people also use Favtape to make playlists and Twitter their music:
http://search.t...ch?q=%40favtape
http://favtape.com/
http://www.tech...pe-on-steroids/
Thanks for the helpful article! A lot of people also use Favtape.com to make playlists and Twitter their music:
http://search.t...ch?q=%40favtape
This is going to be the first time I complain about an article on TechCrunch. I really think such articles belong on another type of site. They can be quite interesting and have value, but this isn’t news so much as a review (if you would call it that).
I, like most of the other people that come to TechCrunch, come here for three things: to find out about new services, to get industry opinion pieces, and industry news. This article does not fit into any of these categories. I think most would agree that they would rather see a sacrifice in the number of articles in favor of greater focus. Mashable made this same mistake with Facebook apps and whatnot and their quality has suffered greatly.
The economy is junk, it’s a weekend, things are slow, etc., but that doesn’t mean there need to be filler articles. If anything, it means that everybody needs to get back to basics.
Have a great weekend!
@Doc, you said that you come here “to find out about new services.” I think this article fits very nicely into fulfilling that objective, highlighting tools that many may not have known about prior to this article.
Thanks Robin!
doc, techcrunch has a quota. they need 50 twitter articles per day at least.
For automatincally tweeting your loved last.fm tracks try this: http://lastfmlovetweet.com/
It works but perhaps not 100% of the time.
I use it.
How can any of these services have 100% uptime, when twitter itself isn’t even close? (Couldn’t resist)
using this too
http://lastfmlovetweet.com/
Is this a paid ad? If so, it should be marked as such.
Completely agree. If it were, it should be.
If it’s not an ad, what’s the point of it? There’s no news here, just another post promoting Twitter.
I’m sure there are plenty of Twitter-specific blogs you could go and write for if you want to post this kind of thing.
I’m sure there are plenty of other blogs you can go comment on if you don’t want to read this kind of thing.
Twitter is the biggest rising phenom on the web currently so it makes perfect sense that a website such as TechCrunch would and should report all on the associated applications that are being offered to users.
One of the best things about TechCrunch is the variety if topics covered and add that the basic human ability to choose and TC offers something for everyone.
Great list BTW, be interested in rundowns of other Twitter applications like desktop apps, iPhone apps, other mobile apps, reporting apps etc…
Listen, if Assington is locked up in tha sanitarium, why can’t you hacks just STFU about twitter? He’s not there to put his fatboy cigar up your ass.
It’s just the favored hyped Silicon Valley company of the moment. That’s all.
You missed Tweekly.fm – integrating top 3 artists listened to for the week from Last.fm in to one tweet a week. Very nifty and not invasive enough to be irritating!
Sure about that URL?
Thanks for the interesting post Robin! I’d compare Song.ly with twisten.fm + tinysong though, not with tra.kz. It’s much more than URL shortener
wow a lot of twitter apps in this space idk why so many companies even waste time developing for just a congested space
What would you suggest they build instead? Is there an application out there that you believe provides better utility that has not already been saturated?
BLIP ME PLEASE! {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/KYclmJFnXd_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”BLIP ME PLEASE! ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/PNIwlALWrx”}}}
Robin –
You may be interested in a mashup I’ve been playing around with. It aggregates your listening histories from numerous other sites (e.g. Last.fm, iLike, Imeem, etc), tries to find MP3s for each song hosted out on the web somewhere, then publishes them to a Twitter account. When used in conjunction with PlayTwitter, you get passively programmed “radio” stations right in Twitter. Since it leverages free-range MP3s, playback works from the web as well as most mobile phone Twitter apps. More info from the last couple of posts here:
http://globalli...ic.blogspot.com
Feedback from all welcome as I continue to play with the concept.
Hey I am trying to track all these different services on one page: http://twitter.tastestalkr.com
I am most likely going to use one of the sites like Twiturm that allows you to upload mp3s because there are some songs I’d like others to hear but I can never find them on Blip.fm or other sites.
Its time Techcrunch stopped Twitter Spam from polluting this site.
I can think of other things that are polluting this site.
I am really liking LaLa and think you should add it to your list. It doesn’t go with Twitter, but it works a lot like it with “followers” and such. Very clean layout and easy to use. You can upload your own mp3s and listen to others. Plus, if you like a song you can download it for approx 79 cents. I love cheap!
URL to tweekly.fm: http://www.shot....com/tweeklyfm/
Thanks for the twt.fm mention!
Thanks for the interesting post Robin! Great Job!
Great list…Twitter and music discovery / sharing are a natural fit.
I just pushed out a bunch of updates to tweetj.com
Check out the tweetj top 100 for a real time list of the 100 most talked about songs on Twitter.
for musicians that want to find a simple way to post their music to twitter, check out
http://twitter.com/sutros
As I’ve said before, TechCrunch commentors are becoming more and more like YouTube commentors and that’s the absolute truth. Poor grammar, punctuation and bitching about everything.
I enjoy these kind of posts but I’ve seen other blogs like Engadget post a URL and RSS feed for “apple-less” content. So those apple haters can still watch Engadget without any iPhone or Apple coverage.
I believe TechCrunch should make a post that allows people to not get Twitter stories in their RSS feed. Just my opinion because I’m tired of seeing the bitching.
This is not a twitter only app but since you mentioned some apps with Twitter and audio functionality, you may want to check out PimpMyNews at Http://PimpMyNews.com
It converts blogs to audio so you can listen to them while you do other things like drive, workout, etc.. You can also post the audio versions of stories to Twitter, so your followers can listen too.
You can use it on your iPhone, iPod, computer or any mp3 player.
Nice tips. I’m still new in twittering. I think i’ll try it.
hey, i stumbled upon http://ffffoundtape.com. an audio bookmarking site.
An awesome portal to get your tweets heard and get your two minutes of fame!
I used this ‘last.fm’ and pulled its feed to twitter. Decent enuf service of sharing things you #love.
I do not like ‘what are you doing?” or “what are you listening to?” kind of sharing. Its pretty monotonous and boring !
When will these idiots start making money?
there’s also a twitter client allowing to play song.ly MP3 directly in tweets : http://www.statuzer.com
You may also check audiotwit.com, a music feed generator that works with twitter. A cool thing about this is that there is a winamp plugin that can automate the update proccess.
Great list Robin. Keep up the good work.
Brand new Spotwitfy tracks Spotify playlists shared on Twitter
http://spotwitfy.com
Last month, imeem launched a feature that lets people Twitter the music they’re listening to, adding to playlists, or favoriting. The resulting tweets include a link to the song or playlist you’re listening to, making it easy for your Twitter friends and followers to check it out. We think it’s a cool way to share music.
More info here: http://www.imeem.com/twitter
Robin- thanks for creating and sharing this great list! It’s super useful.
Thanks for mentioning Tweekly.fm! Much appreciated!
Great list. I like http://songza.com/ too. Nice Twitter integration and has saved playlists.
Great list. I like songza.com too. Nice Twitter integration and has saved playlists.
I use http://www.maestro.fm to listen to my entire music collection on demand, create new playlists and find new music…. and then twitter it
You can find search for and add tag #mskrev to find other people discussing music on Twitter.
A nice list. Add to the list: http://livekick.com – it sends you local live music concerts recommendations once a day or once a week via Twitter direct twitts based on the artists you listen to on web music services such as last.fm, Pandora, iLike and MySpace Music.
Check out http://twadio.com – or just follow the @tweejay – playing songs in your head since 2008…
I love music. I have the Sgt. Pepper album by the Beatles playing all the time here.
Muziboo.com offers a neat way to automatically tweet music uploads. This can help indie musicians who use twitter to update their fans .
Yes.. you forgot to mention CelleCast here, as we are doing the unique work of combining talk radio listening with twitter-empowered talkbacks.
Twitter profile importable:
http://cellecas...om/register.htm
Audio tweeting in context of listening
http://cellecas...oaudiotweet.htm
Audio tweeting just for the sake:
http://cellecast.com/tweets
Timeline of new cellecast episodes and talkbacks:
http://twitter.com/CelleCast
http://www.imusictweet.com is the best website out right now for music artists to share their music on twitter.