Twitter Tests Buy Button w/Musictoday and Gumroad, Many Musicians Launching Soon
Today Twitter announced official testing of its new Buy button. The feature will allow for ecommerce sales on Twitter's platform which should provide a big boost due to the Buy button's official nature. Initial launch partners include Musictoday, Gumroad, Stripe and Fancy with a bunch more to follow including musicians like Pharrell, Ryan Adams, Eminem, Keith Urban, Megadeth and Wiz Khalifa.
Twitter nicely sums up the most immediate news:
"For a small percentage of U.S. users (that will grow over time), some Tweets from our test partners will feature a 'Buy' button, letting you buy directly from the Tweet."
The actual checkout process is designed to be quite simple:
A new way for you to make purchases on Twitter
Payment and shipping info can be stored. It is encrypted, of course, but also note that Twitter went to https a while back so they are already security conscious.
Assuming that there are no major breaches early on, a heck of a lot of people could end up storing credit card or related payment info with Twitter which makes them a very different kind of company. Keep in mind that analysts are always raving over Apple's credit card collection. That's a very powerful relationship to have with the consumer.
For musicians that means you will eventually have a variety of options to sell your music and merch directly on Twitter that buyers will associate with the platform itself. Given that there have been many successes with sales via Twitter, this official element is likely to increase trust and potentially take sales to a whole new level.
Twitter's initial partners are ecommerce and payments related: Fancy, Gumroad, Musictoday and Stripe. If you're already working with one of these companies start looking to them for info about how you can get access to the Twitter Buy button.
Twitter's blog post also includes a combination of nonprofits, big brands and musicians in their coming soon list with musicians dominating.
While Twitter is definitely going through some growing pains, the Buy button may well be a gamechanger for musicians on Twitter.
More:
- Gumroad, Topspin and Square Introduce New Music Ecommerce Options
- Eminem, Bon Jovi & Tim McGraw Going D2F With Gumroad & Chirpify
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch) recently launched DanceLand. Send news about music tech startups and services, DIY music biz and music marketing to: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
Getting closer to our BuyingThis(tm)