Digital

Twitter announces Echo Nest and Gracenote partnerships

By | Published on Wednesday 11 January 2012

Twitter

Twitter has announced partnerships with Echo Nest and Gracenote which will enable the two companies to take messages from verified pop star Twitter accounts and integrate them with other services.

Echo Nest will make such tweets available to app developers, while Gracenote will provide it as extra periphery content for digital music services. The first Gracenote customer to make official tweets available as music plays will likely be Omnifone’s new streaming platform Rara.com.

Says Echo Nest CEO Jim Lucchese: “Twitter is arguably the most important and immediate artist-to-fan communication medium in the world. Until now, there was no simple way for developers to integrate musicians’ tweets directly into their applications”.

Says Gracenote President Stephen White: “This partnership means verified Twitter accounts can be distributed into a wide range of products and brands – from smart TVs and automotive infotainment systems to cloud music services and smartphones”.

Which is all super. Of course if commercial enterprises start utilising celebrity tweets, it might reignite the debate as to whether big name tweeters should start to earn royalties for their micro-blogged intellectual property.

While Twitter’s own commercial operations are pretty low-key, most celebs are happy to view the micro-blogging service as a useful free communication and promotional tool, but if the digital firm or third party partners start to find ways to monetise that content, more savvy artists – or their managers – might start to see tweeting as a potential new revenue stream.



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