Twitter Music shuts down, going offline April 18


The fat lady is warming up for Twitter Music.

Twitter confirmed it has shut down the music service in a tweet Friday. Anyone still using the app will be able to use it until April 18.

A subsequent tweet indicated Twitter isn't getting totally out of music, but the company isn't providing any more details.

The Verge says Twitter's "music discovery by way of Twitter conversation" just didn't establish enough of a user base in a very competitive market.

The April 18 deadline comes exactly a year after Twitter Music first launched. Artists sent their music-related tweets to the service and it pulled tracks from iTunes, Spotify and Rdio. (Via PocketNow)

"It's unclear where it all went wrong," says TechnoBuffalo. "Twitter rarely advertised or even acknowledged the app, perhaps preferring to let it go viral, indicating that the social network might have figured it was doomed from the start."

Electronista draws parallels to Apple's defunct Ping service: it would appear users just don't have an interest in separate, music-only social apps.

Rumors of its death weren't exactly exaggerated, either. Back in October of last year, AllThingsD was already reporting the app's "fate is nearly sealed."

Of course, any time you kill an app these days another springs up to take its place. Twitter Music’s quiet death comes as Apple is looking into its own Spotify-like music service.