Have you ever discovered a new artist or song that you loved, but then found it difficult to be able to share your newfound favorite with your friends and family?
It sounds like a fairly simple action to take, but there can be some unforeseen complications. If you listen to a new band on Spotify and then try to share it with someone, they may not have an account, and before they got to hear the amazing track you can’t get your of your head, they’ll have to sign up. Any barrier that must be crossed before someone can get into the groove is a big problem, as many people simply aren’t willing to stick it out and put forth the effort.
Streaming service Rhapsody is looking to make sharing music as easy as the push of a button (or the click of a logo) within their app. For those who have an account with the company, they can share whatever they are listening to—be it a previously unknown artist or one of the biggest names on the planet—instantly on Twitter, and it’s now easier than it’s ever been.
While you’re in the Rhapsody app, you can click the Twitter logo that will now be superimposed onto the screen you see when a song is playing. When you click that, a tweet will pop up, and you can add your 140 characters (“OMG I LOVEEE THIS BAND”…or whatever is more your style), and the song is still in your tweet. This is all thanks to Twitter’s recently-added audio cards, which allow songs to be a part of tweets much like photos are.
Rhapsody’s announcement is special because they are now the first company to offer fully-licensed tracks for free sharing on the social network. So far the only options for sharing music on Twitter were either limited (30 seconds, or just a similarly-small sample), or forced somebody to leave the site. With this latest innovation, you can share your music right from the streaming source.
In a statement about the new feature, Rhapsody CFO Ethan Rudin discussed how music needed to be more social:
“We wanted to make the experience of sharing music with friends easy. Our goal with this launch is to not only help make streaming more social, but also to reinforce that music isn’t free–every song played is accounted for and fully paid up.”
Big name artists such as Wiz Khalifa, Pearl Jam, Fifth Harmony and Flo Rida are all helping out with the launch today by using the new feature to share music from their latest albums, and that’s just the beginning.
Rhapsody recently hit 2.5 million paid subscribers around the world, and they are making big strides in attracting plenty of those who haven’t yet found a streaming service that they want to commit to. At the end of the day, music is best when it is at its most social, and that’s exactly what Rhapsody is looking to facilitate here. [Forbes]
