>In short, using Twitter API's is suicide. Partnering with Twitter could still foster some potential profit.
If you're smaller than Twitter, be somewhat wary of what might happen to said partnership in the future. Make sure you don't become obsolete in Twitter's eyes.
It's completely asinine to have two separate policies for small kids and big kids, yet that's what we see at Twitter. Is this an example of the 80/20 rule or something more sinister? I'm not sure.
One thing's for certain: I hate Twitter's monetization strategy not because it doesn't work but because I find it distasteful.
Twitter is valued somewhere in the ballpark of $5BB, so every single streaming music provider (as opposed to the download/purchase platforms of Amazon/Apple/Google) is small fish compared to Twitter.
(I believe Apple/Google/Amazon only provide discrete music downloads, rather than streaming services. Apologies if I had misconceptions about their service offerings)
That doesn't seem to me like they're small fish compared to twitter. given how much valuations fluctuate (Pandora was at $4 billion as recently as 2011), I think they're all in the same bin.
After all, Twitter's valuation is based on a less certain business model than the other providers, who have successfully implemented ads and premium accounts, and have paying customers.
(Pandora is an interesting case, since they've publicly said that they're not going to be profitable for another 5 years...)
Soundcloud is pretty big too.