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Tweet your music preferences with these apps

Want to share your favorite songs on Twitter? Here are several services worth trying out.

Don Reisinger
CNET contributor Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has covered everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Besides his work with CNET, Don's work has been featured in a variety of other publications including PC World and a host of Ziff-Davis publications.
Don Reisinger
5 min read

If you're a music lover and you want to share your favorite tracks with your Twitter followers, you've come to the right place. Below, you will find several cool apps that allow you to syndicate all your music tastes to your Twitter accounts in just a few simple steps.

But before you get started, it's important for us all to remember to be responsible Twitter users. While it's nice to tell friends about our music tastes, we shouldn't do it all day, every day. That's a surefire way to guarantee that I (and probably others) stop following you.

With that out of the way, let's take a look at some of the better Twitter music services.

Tweet your music

Blip.fm Blip.fm provides a Twitter-like service for music lovers.

Blip.fm features an input box to update other users about the many songs you enjoy. To do so, you'll need to search the site for a track. From there, it's automatically populated in the box, giving you the option to send a favorite song to friends. When you "blip" the song, it accesses it from Imeem, giving you the ability to listen to it on the site.

To share your content with Twitter, you'll need to link your Blip.fm account with the microblog. From there, your Blip.fm updates can be syndicated to your Twitter profile, providing users a link to your blip and the option to stream the respective song. It's a nice service, but I think it's a little too much work if you only want to share songs on Twitter.

Blip.fm
Blip.fm does some unique things with music sharing. Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET

Imeem Imeem also provides a way for users to share their favorite tracks with Twitter friends.

In order to use Imeem, you'll need to register for the site. It adds time initially, but once you get over that, you can quickly search for songs. You can simply listen to tracks. But if you're in the sharing mood, click the "tweet this" button. Upon doing so, your Twitter tweet-input box is populated with the name of the song, the artist, and a link to the song's Imeem page, allowing your followers to listen to the track. Imeem doesn't automatically update your Twitter stream, so you can modify the tweet as you see fit.

Imeem
Imeem populates your Twitter page with a tweet. Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET

Serenade Serenade is a simple iPhone app that allows you to share what you're listening to with friends.

After you fire up the app, it automatically finds the song you're playing. From there, you can click the "Share with Twitter" option. The service will then update your status with the title of the song followed by an iTunes preview link, giving followers the option to test the song and see if it's worth buying. The app populates the Twitter field with a basic tweet, but you can modify that as you wish to tailor it to your followers. And since the app is free, it's worth checking out.

Serenade
Serenade lets you modify your tweets. Serenade

Songly Song.ly, found at www.song.ly, is yet another online service that helps you share music via Twitter.

Songly couldn't be much simpler. Simply input the name of the song you're listening to into the site's search box. Songly then searches the Web to find streams of the song you input. When you find the song you want to tweet, you can click the "tweet" button next to the track. The service automatically populates your Twitter profile with the name of the artist, the song, and a link back to Songly so the user can listen to the full track.

I liked Songly. It had every song that I searched for (both new and old). And since it's free to use, it made it all the more appealing.

Songly
Search for songs you like on Song.ly. Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET

TweetMusic TweetMusic is another iPhone app that gives you the option of communicating your favorite songs with your Twitter followers.

TweetMusic automatically determines the songs you're listening to. From there, you can open the app, choose to tweet your track to the service, and it takes care of the rest. It automatically populates your status-update box with the name of the artist, their song, and a direct link to that song in the iTunes library. To differentiate the app, it also features the option to automatically send a tweet to the artist when you're listening to one of their songs (presuming, of course, that they are on Twitter). It's a really nice feature that adds a little more flavor to the app.

TweetMusic, which recently launched, costs 99 cents. But its extras and a great design make it worth the price.

TweetMusic
TweetMusic features the option to tweet your favorite artists. Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET

TwittyTunes (Windows link) If you're looking for a Firefox extension to help you syndicate your favorite tracks to your Twitter profile, TwittyTunes is a great place to start.

TwittyTunes is an extension for FoxyTunes, which is an add-on for Firefox. In other words, you'll need to download FoxyTunes, a Firefox add-on that allows you to control tracks you're playing in your browser, before you can use TwittyTunes. Once you do so, I think you'll like what you find with TwittyTunes.

Unlike so many other tools that automatically send what songs you're listening to on your computer to Twitter, TwittyTunes gives you the option of picking which songs to send to your followers. Simply click the TwittyTunes option in your status bar, tell your followers what you're listening to (TwittyTunes automatically populates the Tweet box for you), and you're all set. TwittyTunes will also let you update your followers with sites you're visiting or videos you're watching. It's a really neat app. Check it out.

TwittyTunes
TwittyTunes lets you post songs to Twitter. FoxyTunes

Twt.fm Twt.fm is one of my favorite services in this roundup. Instead of making you do all the work of sharing cool songs with friends, Twt.fm does (almost) everything for you.

When you first get to Twt.fm, you'll need to authorize the service to access your Twitter account through the social network's OAuth authorization. From there, you need only to input the name of the artist and the song. Twt.fm then searches around the Web to find the song on services like Imeem and provides a direct link to the stream.

When you send that tweet to your followers, they will see the name of the artist, their song, and a Twt.fm link to the song's stream. It's a really neat service. And since it's free, you should have some fun using it.

Twt.fm
Twt.fm lets users listen to songs with you. Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET

My top 3

1. Twt.fm: With such a quick response time and nice design, Twt.fm easily tops the list.

2. TwittyTunes: If you're a Firefox user, TwittyTunes is for you.

3. Songly: You shouldn't have any trouble finding songs you care about on Songly.

Related story: 5 apps get you tweeting from the desktop