Rhapsody International Inc. will make its 32 million songs available to users of Twitter Inc., the first music-streaming service to let people listen to a full library of licensed tunes within the social network.
Rhapsody said its subscribers will be able to post songs on Twitter, where followers and friends can listen. Anyone who opts to listen will open a page that includes a link back to Rhapsody.
The partnership will be Twitter's latest attempt to get its 288 million monthly active users to listen to music through posts on the social network -- after failed attempts to build its own applications, and exploring acquisitions of music companies. Rhapsody, which has more than 2.5 million subscribers, is offering Twitter users a free trial if they click a link in the music-playing Tweet.
"The goal here is to get as many people as possible to experience Rhapsody through a Rhapsody trial," Ethan Rudin, the Seattle-based company's chief financial officer, said in an interview at the South by Southwest technology conference in Austin, Texas.
Rudin said some prominent musicians will promote the new collaboration. He declined to name the entertainers, saying the music service wants to surprise fans.
Rhapsody was one of the first subscription streaming services to offer unlimited access to a vast library of licensed songs for a monthly fee. Streaming music wasn't widespread when the service started in 2001, but the industry in recent years has embraced the technology as the future of the business.
Apple Inc. acquired Beats Music, the headphones company with a music-streaming service, for $3 billion while Spotify, the Stockholm-based streaming leader, has been valued higher.
"Rhapsody earns some kind of medal for sticking with it as long as they have," James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research, said in an interview. "The business they were one of the first to attempt is finally coming to fruition under Spotify's brand."
Terms of the agreement weren't disclosed. Twitter spokesman Shavone Charles declined to comment on the partnership.
Twitter made a similar deal with Soundcloud and Apple Inc.'s iTunes in October 2014. Soundcloud, a music streaming service with more than 175 million monthly active users, features music from both professional and amateur musicians. It doesn't have licenses from most of the major record labels and music publishers, like Rhapsody, Spotify or YouTube.
Twitter, meanwhile, gets another shot at integrating music into its service. Musicians use the San Francisco-based social network to promote shows and communicate with fans. Twitter created an app in 2013 that identified popular songs and artists based on its users' tweets and conversations. It lasted less than a year.
"Twitter has always been very active, very interested in music, and we saw a hole in the music listening experience and sharing," Rudin said. Rhapsody wants to "ensure the Twitter universe is our playground to get people to start sharing music."
Sarah Frier with Bloomberg News contributed to this report.
SundayMonday Business on 03/23/2015