Tweet-friendly media can now be shared by musicians.
As South by Southwest transforms from a massive tech party to a massive music festival, Twitter has unveiled Twitter for Musicians and Artists, a page offering tips on how musicians can use the service to connect with their fans.
Even if you’re not a world-famous musician, many of the suggestions will be pretty familiar…
(Use hashtags! Reply to your fans!) Perhaps the most interesting thing is the suggestion that artists share their music specifically through links to YouTube, Rdio, or iTunes — in other words, sites whose content is directly viewable in tweets, without having to leave Twitter.
The Twitter for Musicians Page returns to some of the other themes of the site’s latest redesign. For one thing, it promotes the idea that an artist’s @username is their new URL.
Overall, Twitter describes itself as “the artist’s voice empowered”:
Musicians are always surrounded by people who want to tell their story. Whether it’s a publicist, a manager, an agent, a label rep, a journalist or that guy or gal you dated in high school, it seems no one hesitates to share their take on you and your work. But the most powerful voice is your own. Whether you’re celebrating a career milestone or need to clear the air, Twitter is the easiest and most powerful way to get your message across, directly and clearly.
This idea comes up later, when Twitter urges artists to use the service to break news: “You don’t always have to rely on a publicist to say that you’re excited that about your GRAMMY nominations; simply tweet it and share the joy instantly.”
Of course, artists who see Twitter as their “true” platform for interacting directly and authentically with fans, and for breaking news, aren’t just building a following — they’re driving attention and traffic for Twitter itself.
Twitter has been periodically rolling out how-to pages like this, starting with a general Twitter 101 page for businesses, and, more recently, specialized sites like Twitter for Newsrooms.
Original story by Anthony Ha