Here it is! (Photo: GMA/Twitter)

Because apparently there aren’t enough music apps in existence, Twitter announced today on ABC gigglefest Good Morning America that it will be making its highly anticipated foray into the crowded music market. Along with a website, Twitter #Music (hashtag!) is a new, separate app for your iPhone that’s slated to be released later this afternoon.

Twitter explained on GMA that its new app “helps you find music that’s popular on Twitter and music based on the bands you follow.” The music discovery service is centered around four tabs: Popular, Emerging, Suggested, and #NowPlaying.

The first two tabs focus on the Twitter community as a whole and highlight what everyone in the world is listening to, while the latter two provide a personalized experience: Suggested helps you search for new music depending on your friends’ tastes and #NowPlaying shows you what your friends are listening to. It also takes public humiliation to a whole new level: “For instance, if your friend tweets that they are listening to a song by Justin Bieber, that song will show up on that page.” Sounds great!

It's important to note that Twitter isn’t storing any of this music, but aggregating it from three sources: iTunes, Spotify, and Rdio. Preview clips will be played using iTunes, but Rdio and Spotify subscribers will be able to log-in to their accounts to stream full tracks. Twitter’s blog writes that it's looking to add other music providers. Also, there's no Android version just yet.

Twitter explained that its service and music “go great together” since so many people use it to share and discover today’s hottest hits:

Many of the most-followed accounts on Twitter are musicians, and half of all users follow at least one musician. This is why artists turn to Twitter first to connect with their fans — and why we wanted to find a way to surface songs people are tweeting about.

Musicians, trendsetters and important E! hosts like Ryan Seacrest are already raving about it so it’s obviously the perfect tool if you love listening to music from Z100.

https://twitter.com/RyanSeacrest/statuses/322483675839221760

The tweet, coupled with news that another label, coupled with news that more than 200 labels were leaving Spotify with the distributor STHoldings, touched off a rehashed debate about online music distribution.

According to The Wire:

Tracks from over 200 record labels will be removed from Spotify, Napster, Simfy, and Rdio. Labels distributed by STHoldings include Hessle Audio, Skull Disco and Mordant Music. Out of 238 labels distributed by STHoldings (which specialises in techno, grime, dubstep, and bass music), only four said they did not want their content removed from the streaming services.

STHoldings said in a statement: "As a distributor we have to do what is best for our labels. The majority of which do not want their music on such services because of the poor revenues and the detrimental affect on sales. Add to that the feeling that their music loses its specialness by its exploitation as a low value/free commodity. Quoting one of our labels "Let’s keep the music special, fuck Spotify.""

STHoldings said it made the decision based on a study that showed that music listeners don't care about owning music if they can listen to it whenever they want (as you can with Spotify).

The debate is redundant; Spotify's rates are so low that artists feel they're comparable to being downloaded for free. Smaller labels have been dropping out of Spotify, most issuing public statements about the unfairness of the model. Napalm Records, an Austrian outfit which quit in September, put it thusly: “The income generated through streaming is so insignificant that neither we, as a record company, nor our artists are able to further support this method of distribution."

But is the artist backlash enough to doom Spotify, which recently started staffing up in New York, on this side of the pond? American Spotify lovers will be encouraged to hear that the startup has been dealing with the issue for a year in the U.K., where the service is still thriving. For a good breakdown of how Spotify makes money, head over to the Guardian.

My reaction exactly

I used to pay $14.99 a month for Rhapsody. I dug the catalog and being able to create a playlist at home and then throw it on at a party with my phone, but it was buggy in the browser and streaming over my phone was spotty. I quit after about a year.

This morning I got on Spotify and so far the experience has been, as promised, very slick and enjoyable. The catalog seems fairly deep--I tested it with indie bands like Atlas Sound and, at the suggestion of Andy Weissman, Bardo Pond. Spotify nailed both of them. It had my favorite track from the deep soul group The Falcons, but no albums.

The interface is intuitive to anyone who's used iTunes and after a slight hiccup I got the Facebook integration working. This was a big deal, because suddenly Spotify changed from being a great way to listen to music to a discovery tool. I saw an old college buddy on the service, browsed through his recent plays, and found some interesting new tracks.

Spotify also tapped Klout to promote its launch, which has succeeded to the point that Klout is now crashing and telling users like Frank Denbow that they have already signed up when they have not. Still, this was a brilliant use of the social scoring service. It made it seem a little exclusive because you needed a certain Klout score to get on. When users did get through that gate, they were prompted with the typical pyramid scheme: invite five friends and get a free trial of the premium version. Normally I would have skipped this step, but I wanted to broadcast that my Klout score was high enough to get in, so I bit the bullet and spammed my friends.

One irony of the Facebook integration was that as soon as I saw friends listed next to my tunes, I wanted to click on their icons and start chatting with them about the music. That kind of instant, intimate engagement is what has made Turntable.fm such a success. It seems like adding chat wouldn't be difficult, or perhaps a moot point if users are launching Spotify from within Facebook.

My friend Mario, the college buddy who I found on Spotify through Facebook, declared that he liked Rdio better, because the Spotify discovery process was so bland. "It sucks that when I log on I just see a bunch of top 40 bullshit. With Rdio, I listened to something and it immediately started suggesting new stuff for me, I'm just adding adding adding, whereas I have to think in Spotify. The network on Rdio is much broader, not just Facebook, but Twitter and Google too." Spotify and Facebook seemed tied at the hip right now. Time will tell if that means an exclusive relationship, and if that damages Spotify's prospects.