We have been hearing rumblings but now it is official. RIM has released BBM Music in a public beta in the Beta Zone for the US, Canada, and UK with more countries coming soon. BBM Music is RIM’s attempt to differentiate the BlackBerry platform with social features built on their latest BBM 6 functionality. It lets users build a catalog of 50 songs to define themselves with the ability to change 25 of those songs every month. You then invite your friends on BBM and you can play both your catalog along with all of your friends selected songs. The bigger your BBM contact list the bigger your collection. You easily get to see what songs your friends chose and listen to their full tracks. Better yet you get to keep track of how many of your friends listened to your tracks. It also gives you offline listening so you can listen to songs on the subway (Sweet!). RIM currently has a catalog of 2+ million songs to choose from and they are hoping to grow it significantly when it comes out of beta.
The BBM Music app will offer up a free month for users after which you will have to pay $4.99/month to listen to full tracks. If you don’t pay then you still get access to all the social features but you will only be able to play 30 second previews. The social features are slick letting you leave comments on songs and even start a chat around them. Check it out at www.blackberry.com/bbmmusic
Key features of BBM Music include:
- 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:
- Build a personal music profile with 50 of your favorite songs. You can refresh your profile by swapping out up to 25 songs each month.
- Invite your BBM friends to subscribe to BBM Music and to join your BBM Music Community.
- 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.
RIM Announces BBM Music – A New Social Music Sharing and Discovery Service
New Cloud-Based Music Service Makes Music a Social Experience
Waterloo, ON – Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM; TSX: RIM) today announced BBMTM Music, a new BBM (BlackBerry® Messenger) service for socially connected music fans.
BBM Music is an easy-to-use cloud-based service that enables social and viral music discovery by allowing users to build an evolving, community-based music library that is shared amongst their BBM Music friends. The size of the music library continues to grow as new friends join the community and each user can select music from a catalog with millions of songs from leading music companies – Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI.
“More than 45 million customers already love the social communication benefits delivered through BBM and we are thrilled to be extending the experience into a uniquely social and interactive music service,” said Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at Research In Motion. “We have partnered with leading music companies to provide a „full track‟ music sharing and discovery experience that will provide users with quality music on demand and allow them to connect with friends on a whole new level.”
Key features of BBM Music include:
“A major component of online music continues to be about community, and the ability to discover new artists and music through word of mouth,” stated Rob Wells, President of Global Digital Business for Universal Music Group. “BBM Music dynamically and elegantly integrates the excitement of this social music discovery process with a high quality music service, enabling tens of millions of BlackBerry users to experience new music and to share those experiences with their friends virtually anywhere and at anytime.”
“We are pleased to be partnering with Research In Motion on their BBM Music service. RIM and its large base of BlackBerry Messenger users represent an exciting platform for expanding the reach of commercial digital music around the world,” stated Thomas Hesse, President, Global Digital Business, U.S. Sales and Corporate Strategy, Sony Music Entertainment. “The combination of a premium music solution and instant messaging will enable viral music discovery and emphasize the social power of digital music. It also offers an effective way of serving younger consumers by integrating music into the fabric of an important hub of their digital activity.”
"A dynamic social music experience is a powerful way for our artists to connect with fans and also for fans to discover music by interacting with each other," said Michael Nash, Executive Vice President, Digital Strategy & Business Development, Warner Music Group. "Addressing more than 45 million BlackBerry Messenger users with a service tailor-made for its mobile community, BBM Music has the opportunity to reach a broad and engaged audience."
“We are very excited to work with Research In Motion to bring our artists‟ music to BBM‟s huge and very loyal user base,” said Mark Piibe, Executive Vice President of Global Business Development at EMI Music. “BBM Music‟s unique social discovery experience offers fans a
great new way to discover music, share their favorite tracks with their friends and build a stronger connection with the artists they love.”
"The widespread adoption of mobile devices provides the perfect foundation for consuming and sharing music. Brands that want to deliver a unique interactive experience must create services that are mobile, social, and contextual,” said Maribel Lopez Principal at Lopez Research and Constellation Research Group.
A closed (limited) beta trial of the BBM Music service is starting today in Canada, the United States and the UK. The BBM Music service is expected to be commercially available to customers later this year for a monthly subscription of $4.99 USD* in Australia, Canada, Columbia, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, the United Kingdom and the United States.
For more information about BBM Music, and to sign up to be notified of its availability in your country, please visit www.blackberry.com/bbmmusic.
* Pricing may vary by country and will be announced upon availability in each country. Data charges may apply if music is downloaded over wireless networks in conjunction with limited data plans. Check with your network operator for the terms of your data plan
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