NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Twitter has finally launched its much-anticipated music app.
The company launched its service last week exclusively to musicians, but Twitter on Thursday made the app available to every iPhone user via the iTunes App Store.
Users will also be able to access the service on the Web later on Thursday, at music.twitter.com. Twitter said an Android app is coming soon.
Twitter’s new app, which is separate from its primary social networking application, helps users find music based on the bands and artists they follow.
The app suggests bands you might like, and it shows what music the people you follow are currently listening to. Users can also search popular music enjoyed by the universe of other app users, and Twitter also surfaces what it calls “emerging” trends and artists.
Through partnerships with streaming music companies Rdio and Spotify, subscribers to those services can listen to music straight from Twitter’s new app. They can also hear previews of music on iTunes and purchase songs, if they wish. Twitter said it will continue to add new music services to its app.
The app comes a week after Twitter announced it had purchased “We Are Hunted,” an Australian music streaming and recommendation service.
Twitter’s dive into music is part of its new strategy to become more immersed in the media distribution and content delivery business. Bloomberg reported this week that
Twitter is in final negotiations with Viacom and Comcast’s NBCUniversal to let the social network distribute the networks’ TV clips and sell ads alongside them. In January, Twitter launched Vine, a six-second video-sharing app.
