Twitter Aus talks strengthened approach to music

Of all the current relevant social media platforms, Twitter has been at the forefront of incorporating music more and more with their product and image. Recently TMN caught up with Partnerships Mgr: Music, Entertainment, Events – Twitter Australia, Jennie Sager, to talk about Twitter's new approach to music.

Earlier this year Twitter Australia launched The Blueroom, a dedicated space for artists as well as important tweeters to host video Q&As with their fans. They launched the initiative with US band Imagine Dragons but since have had the likes of Little Sea, Reece Mastin, At Sunset andConchita Wurst take part.

“The response has been amazing. We’ve had stars like Imagine Dragons but we’ve also had emerging artists like Jamie Lawson and we had Conrad Sewell in here yesterday,” says Sager. “As far as response from the music artists, it couldn’t be better, they are absolutely loving the space, they’ve been incredibly grateful that a social media platform is embracing music and is welcoming and opening doors for music artists to their fans."

This further focus is something Twitter has been sitting on for quite some time, and rightly so consideringmusic is the #1 most talked about thing on Twitter.In March this year Twitter cemented a deal with Rhapsody which allows Rhapsody users to post tracks via the Twitter app. The partnershipallowed Twitter's users to use the streaming service without an account, adding an entirely new facet to their social media platform. “Twitter is constantly evolving to support music artists and their fans.Because of that, we’ve really been moving away from the idea of just 140 characters.

"[..] We’ve released a lot of new video tools over the past year; if you think about Vines and the video card, the in-app video tool…so video is constantly evolving on the platform and live streaming – whether that’s video or music – is absolutely an area that we want to continue to grow in.”

Twitter is well aware of the constant stream of information on music being shared everyday –the "global 24/7 music conversation"as Sager puts it. Fans interact with other fans, artists with fans, artists with artists, all are constantly sharing more and more information with those they follow. It’s this constant conversation that Twitter believes sets it apart:“[It's] the only place where music artists can see their favorite stars also interacting in real time conversation. Think about things like Niall from 1D talking to Tim Cahill and Katy Perry talking to Lady Gaga.I think that there is a lot of ways that Twitter focuses on what a music fan wants from that experience around the world and you can really be with an artist from the start of a campaign.”

This fact is driven home by Kelly Clarkson’s recent album campaignfor Piece By Piece. She used the platform to feed information, photos, exclusives and tracks to her followers from the verystart to end of the campaign. The campaign started on New Year's Dayand has since netted her an additional 193,000 more followers whilst her audiocards premiering new tracks –exclusively available to users of Android and iOS –recieved roughly 1 million views.

“It’s all about authenticity so one thing that keeps Twitter apart is the fact that it’s really the artist doing the tweeting themselves, not their management, not their agent."

In late March, Twitter launched their live streaming app Periscope after purchasing it in January, with artistsin particular being early adopters and using thatplatform as a way to provide even more unique and rich content to their fans.

"I think that that’s absolutely one of the keys to success on Twitter," Sager adds, "remaining authentic and breaking down that barrier between yourself and your fans and finding that balance of what you want to share and that’s why those people are so successful. Also they are very active on Twitter, they’re tweeting a few times a day and reaching out directly to their fans, engaging with favoriting, replying and retweeting, being authentic and being active, sharing really rich content."

One other recent initiative by the social media platform was the launch of the Greenroom, a space in the Australian Radio Network's studios designed with Twitter Australia. It features a GIF Booth which creates GIF's of the people using it, tweeted in real time as well as a Twitter MIrror for sending autographed selfies. The GIF Booth was teased on The Today Show just over a week ago.