RIM officially announces “BBM Music”

A midnight press release and Tweet confirmed all the previous rumours of RIM launching “BBM Music”. This new music service is integrated within BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) and “is expected to be commercially available to customers later this year”. In the meantime RIM stated that there’s “a closed beta trial of the BBM Music service is starting today in Canada, the United States and the UK”.

When this officially becomes available, BBM users can opt in for a $4.99 (USD) monthly subscription. As to what BBM Music offers, RIM has started off with a music catalog that features millions of songs from Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI.

BBM Music lets you share and discover music, but first you’ll have to have a BlackBerry smartphone and have BBM 6 installed on it. RIM said in a blog post that “Each BBM Music user can create a profile of up to 50 songs from the millions of tracks available in the BBM Music Catalog. In addition to those 50 songs in your profile, the more BBM Music friends you have, the more songs you can add and enjoy! In other words, your BBM Music friend’s music library = your music library.”

Here’s all the details of how BBM Music will add to your BlackBerry experience:
– Build your music profile from a Catalog of millions of tracks (with more to be added over the coming weeks)
– Invite friends to BBM Music from your BBM contacts and gain access to their music and share your music (once they subscribe or join the free trial)
– Create playlists from your BBM Music songs plus your friends’ songs
– Share playlists or single songs with BBM Music friends
– Follow your friends’ BBM Music activity via timelines and comments, or start up a BBM chat about your favorite bands
– Cache music for easy offline listening
– Seamless integration with other BlackBerry music services

More info here at BBM Music

Source: MarketWire
Via: CrackBerry & Inside BlackBerry