BBM hits the right notes with socially connected music fans
Research In Motion (RIM) today announced BBM Music, a new BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) service for socially connected music fans.
BBM Music is a 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 RIM. “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,”he added.
Key features of BBM Music include:
- Music made social
- 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
- Up to 50 tracks can be shared among the music community
- Easily discover music that your BBM Music friends are listening to, and comment on your friends’ songs and
- 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.
- 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.
Omnifone, a cloud music service provider, is providing RIM with a back-end solution for the BBM Music service that provides content management, music hosting and reporting functions.
A closed beta trial of the BBM Music service is starting now 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 USD 4.99 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.
