on Tue, 06/03/2014 - 3:50pm
A little over a year ago Twitter announced Twitter #Music, a new Webservice and app aimed at helping fans discover new music. After a little more than a year with limited success, Twitter announced it would shut down the project shortly before announcing a new partnership with Billboard.
Well just last week Billboard officially launched the "Trending 140 Chart", which is a Realtime music chart, updated every 15 minutes with the hottest records everyone is Tweeting about. The chart uses the acceleration of mentions over the past hour to rank songs. As for now, the chart is not genre specific and offers some interesting bits of information like the cool little graphs that show a song's individual trend over time.
I think this is a huge break for independents, since twitter is an open platform and seeing an artist like Freddie Gibbs at the top of the chart (last time cheked) only confirms that feeling. Unfortunately, it won't be long before someone at the labels is cashing a check to come up with creative ways to game the system.
Leave a comment and let us know what your thoughts are...
- Does this inspire you to put more attention on promoting your music on Twitter?
- Do you think the chart will remain "unbiased" or eventually get overrun with Major label projects?
- Check the chart and find a record in the top 20 that you've never heard and let us know what you think.