Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) has come up with a cloud-based music service for its BlackBerry smartphones called BBM Music. The new music service enables users to share songs through instant messages and access “unlimited” music for $4.99 a month.
The beta version of the BBM Music is available in Canada, the UK and the US from today, while the service will be commercially available in Australia, Canada, Columbia, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, the UK and the US later this year. According to RIM, prices may vary by country and will be announced upon availability in each country.
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For a monthly subscription of $4.99, users will be allowed to select up to 50 songs from a catalogue of nearly 10 million tracks. The users can share the songs with friends who have also joined in, and in turn get access to friends’ collection of songs. The collection will grow with more friends signing up for the service. According to RIM, BBM Music will focus on sharing music within existing and expanding social circles.
Below are key features of the BBM Music as mentioned in RIM’s press note:
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Music made social – BBM Music is a cloud-based, social music service that allows you to share and discover music with your friends, creating a continually evolving music library: With each friend that is added to BBM Music, you grow your music collection since the songs from the profile of each BBM Music friend are available to you at any time. Up to 50 tracks from your personal profile are shared with your BBM Music Community, and each member of your community shares up to 50 songs from their profile with you. Enjoy a truly social community-based music experience – the more friends who join your community, the more songs you can listen to. Easily discover music that your BBM Music friends are listening to, and comment on your friends’ songs and playlists. You can create multiple playlists from music in your profile as well as all of your friends’ profiles, and with one click you can shuffle the entire collection of music from your BBM Music Community. You can even see which friend contributed each song while it plays. Within your BBM Music app, you also see a visual timeline that shows the recent updates of all users within your community. It gives you a chronological view of community updates, including who added new friends, which songs were added or removed, which playlists were created and what comments were made by your BBM Music friends. Listen to Full Tracks – BBM Music subscribers can listen to full tracks from their friends’ profiles – not just previews. Offline Listening – Music can be saved to smartphones for offline listening, allowing users to access songs even when they don’t have wireless coverage. Topping the Charts – Keep track of how many friends are listening to your tracks. For more information on the BBM, visit For more information on the BBM, visit www.blackberry.com/bbmmusic |
With BBM Music, it appears that RIM is leveraging the popularity of its BlackBerry Messenger even as the company struggles to stand toe-to-toe with Apple in the global market. RIM’s new cloud-based music service comes days after Google launched its cloud-based music service called “Magnifier”.
Also read,
- Google launches cloud-based music service ‘Magnifier’
- Google Music app revealed; expected to launch soon
- Google I/O: Google Music