Twitter has moved itself into the online music arena with the launch of the twitter music app.

The app allows users to follow their favourite artists and consume the music they are listening to. It also crowd sources your twitter contacts to judge the most popular songs at any time.

Users can download it for iPhone or iPad at this link.

The app helps you find music that is popular on Twitter and music based on the bands you follow. The Popular page shows you new music that’s trending across Twitter while the Emerging tab shows “hidden talent found in tweets.” You can listen to a few seconds of the track and click through to hear it in full from various music services.

In a blog post, Twitter describes twitter music as “a new service that will change the way people find music, based on Twitter.”

It uses Twitter activity, including Tweets and engagement, to detect and surface the most popular tracks and emerging artists. It also brings artists’ music-related Twitter activity front and center: go to their profiles to see which music artists they follow and listen to songs by those artists. And, of course, you can tweet songs right from the app.

The songs on Twitter #music currently come from three sources: iTunes, Spotify or Rdio. By default, you will hear previews from iTunes when exploring music in the app. Subscribers to Rdio and Spotify can log in to their accounts to enjoy full tracks that are available in those respective catalogs. We will continue to explore and add other music service providers.

The response to the app on twitter seems to be positive so far.

Twitter also announced last week that it had acquired “We Are Hunted,” a music recommendation and streaming company based in Australia.