On Thursday afternoon, Twitter launched a seperate music app on Apple iOS devices, aptly named, #Music. The app is set to be made available on music.twitter.com.

This is how it works:

[It uses] Twitter activity, including Tweets and engagement, to detect and surface the most popular tracks and emerging artists. It also brings artists’ music-related Twitter activity front and centre: go to their profiles to see which music artists they follow and listen to songs by those artists

The songs will default to iTunes and will operate using Twitter’s hashtags:

If you’re interested in the songs that have been tweeted by the artists and people you follow on Twitter, you can navigate to #NowPlaying to view and listen to those songs.

Or if you’re scrolling through a chart and you want to learn more about a band you can tap their avatar to see their top song.

Not only will you able to listen to music, but the service will also be home for music-related information. So you can find and follow musicians and discover new music.

There is a checkerboard interface for “Now Playing.” Each tile reveals an album cover with a profile picture and the persons Twitter handle at the bottom. You tap on the tile to play the song.

The app also includes a “Suggested” screen which allows you to search for music from your favourite artists. Once you have found something you like. you can play it straight away. And if you want to share what you are listening to, you can tweet it directly from the player screen.

Twitter’s #music app is free, but it isn’t a free music streaming service, it is a discovery service. The songs will preview on iTunes, but you will have to subscribe to Rdio or Spotify to listen to the full song.

[Source: CNN Money, The Telegraph, Mashable]