Twitter has finally admitted that its not so popular #music app is not working for them and they’ll discontinue the service from April 18th. To accommodate this closure, Twitter have pulled the app from the App Store showing that they weren’t joking.
Twitter did break the news to the world that it was closing its #music service last Friday on the official @TwitterMusic account but seemingly omitted a reason behind the decision, only stating that the Twitter #music app will be removed from the App Store (which it now has been) and that if you have got the app installed, it will continue to work until April 18th.
The Twitter #music app was all about music discovery, and even reached number 6 in the free downloads chart on the iOS App Store shortly after release, but has since failed to get traction. The app has received minimal updates, and even despite the popularity of it never really picking up, Twitter seemingly stood by and didn’t try to change this.
It did, and still does, seem odd that Twitter decided to opt to build a whole standalone app for their music discovery service rather than just bake it directly into the official Twitter app. Perhaps if they had chosen to make the music discovery service native to the official client, the uptake may have been greater.
Perhaps the problem with #music wasn’t the functionality, perhaps it was simply the purpose of the service. Was it designed to discover music, listen to music, listen to radio? Maybe Twitter didn’t even know, so when the app failed to take off, they struggled to provide it with the direction it required to succeed.
Either way, Twitter has chosen the fate for the #music app and now the countdown begins until the service officially shuts down following the removal of it from the App Store.