BlackBerry BBM Music App Debuts
The BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) Music app is live. Offered to BBM customers in Canada, the US and Australia first, BBM users will be able to listen to and share music with friends.
RIM is releasing this BBM Music as a BBM-connected social music service for its BlackBerry users.
The BBM Music Premium subscription allows a user to download and listen up to 50 songs on their BlackBerry. Sounds like a limited amount right? Well, sort of. It turns out all users will also be able to share their songs with other BBM users. This means that a person with 10 BBM friends now has access to 500 additional songs on the music app, plus their own library.
“The more BBM friends with BBM Music Premium subscriptions you have, the more songs you can share! And the sharing goes both ways. Your BBM friends with BBM Music Premium subscriptions will have access to your profile music too, and can access it anytime,” said an official RIM blog post.
Hoping to create a more social listening experience, RIM sees this application as a way for BlackBerry smartphone users to “discover, play and grow their music collections together.” RIM’s new service will help friends connect even further than usual via their smartphones bringing listening to music to the next level.
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Able to swap songs monthly, the BBM Music service allows users to build new playlists from their own library as well as a friends music selections and creates a more social atmosphere via comment and chat capabilities. Additionally, to keep users up to date, there’s a social-network-like newsfeed.
The BBM Music Premium Subscription costs $4.99 monthly and features a trail offer that lasts up to two months for the Canada and the US. The Free Subscription service allows for listening and social networking as well, although users will only be able to listen to 30 second song previews instead of full tracks.
BBM Music is an interesting app opportunity that’s coming from what seems to be the newest innovation at RIM. The only problem is that it seems that not only do users have to pay monthly to listen to only a small library of music, but if a user wants to enjoy the service for free, they get something that isn’t even worth their time. One wonders why RIM didn’t use the advertisement method for free users so that it wasn’t a completely asinine option for people who don’t have a lot of dispensable income. This new technology that RIM is introducing doesn’t exactly seem like the breakthrough technology it needs to implement to save its falling shares and consumer confidence. Let’s hope RIM realizes that rewarding loyal customers may be a better vision than one of higher profit margins before it loses all of its customers.
