Fire Alarm Companies

Research In Motion 's new service will start closed beta in the UK, the USA and Canada.

You have to feel for Research In Motion. The BBM-messaging application: After months of almost constant negative headlines about the company 's BlackBerry devices, it has just unveiled a truly innovative new music service built on its crown jewel. And yet the revelation came as Apple CEO Steve Jobs appeared to suck the blogosphere 's attention and energy away from any other technology history.

BBM Music, it deserves some of that attention, but again: it has much potential and is far from a me-too rivals for popular music services like iTunes, Pandora and Spotify.

Presented by British music services company Omnifone, it has licenses from all four major labels in the bag in time for the start today of the Closed Beta in the UK, the USA and Canada, followed by a global rollout later this year in this countries as well as Australia, Colombia, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

The basic facts: costs BBM music is a subscription service $ 4.99 per month in the U.S. will be, though, as the changes elsewhere in the world is yet to be announced. The user can select 50 songs from the BBM music catalog for the profiles that are used can create playlists, and locally on their BlackBerry smartphone for offline listening.

50 songs? That 's not much, but that's where the BBM angle kicks in. Users can also access the 50 songs from their BBM contacts who register for the service. This means a theoretical range of 100 songs when a friend logs on, 200 songs, when to do three, and 2,000 songs to do when 39th And so on.

RIM has given no details of any limit, but in an interview with berry review, says senior project manager Nick Patsiopoulos "during the beta, the BBM music connections to 140 BBM music contacts is limited to the start, but it is past there \ scale ". Licensing agreements are probably the most important factor in every ceiling is finally set.

The BBM Music app itself is built around an activity stream of the songs friends are adding to their profiles, as well as the friends they are sharing those tracks with, and the playlists they are creating. Users can comment on one another's songs, and fire up full BBM chats from within the application.

The app also ties into Amazon's MP3 music store to buy and download tracks beyond the 50-song limit, with the choice of partner being slightly surprising, given RIM's previously close relationship with British firm 7Digital.

BBM music is interesting and really disturbing in the broader scheme music services. An addressable subscriber base of 45 million users, BBM is a strong base to start from, although BBM is more music on BlackBerry 's younger customers, rather than address their business users.

There are some pitfalls ready. First, the younger users will be willing to pay for a subscription music service, even if it is tied in BBM? Second, how will it stack up in competition with other streaming services, which provide desktop and mobile access, without limiting 50-song? RIM 's means the introduction of these services BBM BBM Social API can build in their own BlackBerry applications after all.

Perhaps most importantly, is BBM Music 's success to the overall performance of the RIM itself bound. It 'sa move bold and innovative, but their long-term prospects for the success of the current wave of BlackBerry 7 OS phones off, but more importantly, as next year' s new generation of devices with RIM 's QNX software to perform.

RIM's challenge remains proving that it can halt its sliding market share against fierce competition from iPhone and Android, but at least BBM Music shows its strategy is not just about playing catch-up.