Twitter ready to buy SoundCloud, the "Youtube Music"

It could be the most important acquisition of social. The platform is worth $ 700 million and serves to share audio and music evolved with tags

TWITTER is preparing to buy SoundCloud , a large network with 250 million monthly users , a kind of " Youtube Music " , although it has elements more specifically social by sharing instantaneous basically allows musicians to upload their own works and listen to all of them . But it does not necessarily have to play or sing : you can upload to SoundCloud any audio file or record directly from the app or from the web. And then you can tag content in a way evolved , commenting also on the single second of audio tracks , in graphical form.

It could be the most expensive acquisition in the history of Twitter, given that Soundcloud is estimated $ 700 million (after the latest round of funding obtained , from 60 million). It would be a nice chunk of two billion dollars taken from Twitter with the landing on the stock exchange in November 2013. But at the moment the company needs a breakthrough to imagine their future : according to many analysts , is growing too slowly may lose importance , so much so that its value on the stock market has halved in the last six months.

Despite the limited success of Twitter Music , Soundcloud and music can be the right piece in the strategy for the new identity of Twitter, according to experts. The Social Sparrow already hosts images and Vine for videos. He tried to expand into the sound , so far without success : Twitter Music has ceased to exist shortly after birth. "Twitter and the music go together ," wrote the company on the occasion of the launch. " People share and discover new songs and albums every day. Several of the most followed Twitter accounts are musicians. Half of our users follow at least one musician. 's Why artists should be first and foremost on Twitter to connect with their fans and because we wanted to find a way to bring out the songs that users are tweeting . "

" The purchase of Soundcloud is useful to Twitter because it gives you the boost needed within the media and adds another to his business publishing platform very interesting," said Brian Blau , an analyst at Gartner. Soundcloud has indeed filled the spaces left free from Myspace ( the social network fallen from the graces of the network) and is one of the most popular ways in which the musicians connect with their fans . Soundcloud is just the music service, of which there are multiple shares on Twitter. If the two companies become one , interesting synergies will arise . Twitter could build the best promotional tools for musicians and bring him more traffic from fans, thanks to Soundcloud . All this translates into higher advertising revenue and user growth . Twitter needs to do both : it has 900 million registered users, about half of which, however, has never made even a tweet. Check the 0.5 percent of digital advertising revenue ( in 2013 , according to eMarketer ) : Although growth compared to 0.3 per cent in 2012 ( and is expected to come at 0.8 per cent in 2014 ) , are crumbs compared to 5.8 percent of Facebook and Google to 32.4 percent .

Now Twitter seems to ask what he wants to be great . The answer that seems to occur is that it aims to become the next generation media platform , with ramifications in all areas . The same objective , moreover, is also pursued by the main competitors , Google and Facebook, for longer and with more strength. It is in the news these days that Youtube / Google would be to spend a billion dollars to Twitch , video game streaming service . But an actor in the game is also Apple, which is going to buy Beats Music for $ 3 billion .

Still in the media , it is remarkable the launch of Paper, the digital newspaper of Facebook. Large international players are emerging that aim to satisfy all our media needs , offering an integrated experience in different areas . It is the game of the future and Twitter wants to be part of it .