Instagram @Music Community Tries To Succeed Where Twitter Failed

Instagram has announced a new community dedicated to music and musicians called @Music, in an effort to leverage the platform’s user interest in the topic.

Unofficially, music has always been a large part of Instagram, accounting for an estimated 25 percent of all the platform’s activity. Recognizing this, Instagram executives have instituted this official music category as well as a number of subcategories as well.

For instance, #LocallySourced is designed to cover unsigned artists and bands (which will be handled by a team of curators), #15SecondLessons will include short music performance lessons, and #DoubleTrack covers musicians interests outside of music. 

The account, which was announced this morning on the Instagram blog, will update six times a week with an emphasis on unsigned acts. This might be deemed an unusual tactic as the music portion of Instagram is currently driven by music superstars like Beyonce (with 30.8 million followers and the platform’s most followed artist), Arianna Grande (30 million), Selena Gomez (28.9 million) and Taylor Swift (28.2 million). Read more on Forbes.

---

Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this blog at no cost to you (just click here).

Twitter To Kill The Music App Nobody Knew It Had

News is now leaking that Twitter is on the verge of killing its #Music app, as the company revamps its music strategy in preparation for its IPO. Some of you reading this are probably saying to yourselves, “I didn’t even know Twitter had a music app!”, and that’s the whole point. The company didn’t do much to promote it, which leads to some interesting speculation.

#Music was launched in April and actually had a reasonable first week or so, but usage dropped like a rock after that, getting no traction from the early adopters and no buzz to bring in other users as a result. The app was based upon the infrastructure of We Are Hunted, a company that Twitter acquired that specialized in new music discovery, which was to be the trademark of #Music. But sometimes things don’t work out as planned, as Twitter made two strategic mistakes with the app.

First of all was timing. Introducing #Music in April might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but it turned out to be a very flawed decision. While not knowing exactly what the corporate thinking was, it would seem that the plan was to get some action in music to spike their IPO a little (which was still unannounced at the time). By having a successful music product, the assumption might have been that it could’ve went to market with that additional feather in its tail and goosed its opening share price as a result. But would that really have mattered? I’ve read valuations of anywhere between $10 to 20 billion that are expected once the IPO is launched, so would a successful #Music really have added much more? 

In retrospect it would’ve been better to wait until after the IPO to launch a music app, as it could’ve ridden on the coattails of all the publicity already being generated. Plus, there would’ve been extra cash to invest in the project to flesh it out more if needed. Read more on Forbes.

----------------------------------

Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Twitter's #Music New Chart Features

Although Twitter's #Music discovery service has gotten off to a somewhat shaky start (it was probably impossible to beat the expectations), it seems to be settling into its own comfortable groove. One thing that's important to fans and artists alike are charts, and #Music has finally included them, giving everyone a better idea not only of what's happening on Twitter but elsewhere as well.

#Music now provides 10 musical genre charts (from rock to country to hip-hop), but the 5 additional charts are the more interesting ones. These include Superstars, Popular, Emerging, Unearthed and Hunted. The Superstars and Popular charts show the songs that are currently trending on Twitter, while Emerging and Unearthed are truly for music discovery of new or lesser-known artists.

The most interesting chart of the bunch may be Hunted, which seems to be derived from We Are Hunted, the service that Twitter bought and turned into #Music. This chart actually looks at blogosphere to determine the listing, not just Twitter.

This service isn't catching on because it has limitations, since you need either a Rdio or Spotify subscription to listen to the song, or you can listen to 90 seconds from iTunes. That just isn't easy enough to use for most listeners who now have plenty of other choices that are much easier to get their music from. Too bad, because #Music could really be a boon to music discovery.

You can access the charts via the icon on the upper left corner of the #Music page.

----------------------------------

Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.