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RIM to launch a new Music Sharing Service
By siliconindia
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Friday, 26 August 2011, 17:36 IST
Bangalore: Research in Motion (RIM) is introducing its new music sharing service today. The company will charge $4.99 for the service on the BlackBerry smart phone that allows users to share songs through instant messaging.
The service is apparently an attempt to boost its fortunes in the consumer smart phone market and to compete with other companies. The facility is a Blackberry Messenger (BBM) Music Service built with a great social component and will be launched on Thursday in United States, Canada and Britain. It will be released in 15 countries by this year end.
Alistair Mitchell, Vice-President, BBM Platform and Integrated Service said the BBM Music will enable Blackberry users to share up to 50 tracks with others. It will also allow the users to discuss songs and build playlists based on their preferences, he added.
According to the RIM's deal with several major record labels, BBM Music users will have to pay a monthly subscription for an access to over 10 million songs. The user will be allowed to choose 50 songs to form a playlist and can swap up to 25 songs, in and out, during a month. The users cannot own any songs or transfer them to other media such as hard drives or mp3 players. The subscription price has been fixed at 4.99$ in the United States and the prices for other countries will be decided soon.
The new service is one of the most ambitious application ventures that RIM has undertaken in recent years. The company plans to provide compelling software services for the consumers in order to regain market share it had lost to Apple and Samsung.
The BBM music service will also be competing with the likes of Spotify and Pandora Music which provide free services and allow users to play selected songs with advertisements in between.
Apple had last year brought forth Ping, a social network for music. RIM now intends to take advantage of the BBM's popularity, which has about 45 million users and is free on all devices.