Rapper and mogul P Diddy was having a tantric-sex session a while ago and decided to post updates on his progress via his Twitter page (twitter.com/iamdiddy). Like many people who try tantric sex, Diddy had to break off at one stage to get himself a turkey sandwich. Later in the day, Diddy used Twitter to tell us he was hosting a reunion meeting between disgraced rapper Chris Brown and his still bruised on-off-on-again girlfriend Rihanna.
Meanwhile, Mike Skinner of The Streets is using his Twitter page (twitter.com/skinnermike) to reply to Lily Allen’s claim that his music is “boring”. “At least she’s not stalking me any more,” he tweets.
Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails is using his Twitter page (twitter. com/trent_reznor) to review Chris Cornell and Timbaland's Screamalbum: "You know that feeling you get when somebody embarrassed themselves so badly you feel uncomfortable? Heard Chris Cornell's record? Jesus."
There was also plenty of press coverage afforded to a Twitter brawl between Brian Eno and Creation Records founder Alan McGee. McGee tweeted Eno to complain about the fact that he no longer made good music and worked with “bores” such as Coldplay and Dido. Brian Eno tweeted back “Fuck off, wanker”.
Except that Brian Eno has just written to a Canadian newspaper to say: “You published the exciting news that I was engaged in a Twitter-fest with Alan McGee. I’m not. I’m not signed up to Twitter. Alan McGee is arguing with someone, but it isn’t me.”
In the past year, Twitter has become the new Facebook and the new blog. For musicians – and just about everyone else in the music industry – it’s a fantastic new digital toy that can instantly alert followers/fans about a new YouTube video being posted, tour tickets becoming available, an upcoming TV appearance, etc.
Of all the social networking sites, Twitter has the youngest and most mobile demographic – people seen as slightly beyond the reach of traditional media outlets.
And lately, Twitter has put greater distance between itself and its social-network rivals with the introduction of a number of key music applications.
Twisten.fm is a sort of aggregate crawl of all Twitter musical tweets. You find out what other Twitterers are listening to and a click on any of the song’s links will bring you to a page hosted by Grooveshark, where you can stream the song or buy it – with a small cut going to the Twitterer who uploaded it.
There’s also Tinysong.com, which lets you type in any track you want, then provides a link which allows you to stream and share it with you friends on Twitter. For unsigned bands, Twiturm.com allows you to
upload your own songs and share them with other Twitterers. These music applications are simple to use and are growing in popularity as more and more people sign up to the site.
But it hasn’t gone unnoticed, especially by Twitter’s founders, that the huge growth of the site has also attracted businesses wanting to use it as a hybrid marketing and customer-service tool. “We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them,” says co-founder Biz Stone. “We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts.” He stresses that Twitter will never charge individual users.
So, when musicians tweet about concert tickets going on sale or an album being released, they are engaging in a commercial activity and will most likely have to pay to use the site. Will they pass this charge on to their “followers”? Or will they remain “individual users” and restrict themselves to tweeting about their day-to-day activities?
Whatever about such promotional activity, applications such as Twisten.fm and Twiturm.com are here to stay,
and will continue to provide a comprehensive – if sometimes erratic – overview of all that’s best and emerging in music at the moment.
Given that it can provide the sort of social service that iTunes can’t, and you can already buy downloads on the site, it’s surely only a matter of time before Twitter becomes a serious music retailer. Perhaps the biggest.
