RIM, the maker of Blackberry is reportedly developing its own music service called BBM Music, according to Wall Street Journal. The service may launch as soon as next week, and is said to work with RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger system.The sources claim that BBM Music isn’t meant to compete with dominating services like iTunes or Spotify, while simultaneously pointing out that it will cost “significantly less” than Spotify which currently offers free, $4.99, and $9.99 monthly tiers. Instead, BBM Music will supposedly allow users to access 50 songs at a time and share those songs over BlackBerry Messenger with friends.
The sources say that this is largely targeted at “young users” who want to customize their phones—yes, the goal is to woo all those swaths of young, hip teenagers and early adults who are not falling over themselves to buy a BlackBerry at the moment. The WSJ doesn’t specifically say what kind of customizations would be possible, but the mere mention of it implies that users might be able to set the songs as ringtones, ringback tones, or find some other young-person-type-use for the music.
RIM didn’t want to compete with the news of Google’s purchase of Motorola or HP.
[Arstechnica]