BlackBerry holding company Research In Motion (RIM) today announced BBM Music, a new BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) service for socially connected music fans.

BBM Music is an easy-to-use cloud-based service that enables social 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 catalogue with millions of songs from leading music companies, the likes of 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 of 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.”  

Key features of BBM Music:

• 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.
• With each friend that is added to BBM Music, you grow your music collection since the songs from the profile of each BBM Music friend are available to you at any time.
• Up to 50 tracks from your personal profile are shared with your BBM Music Community, and each member of your community shares up to 50 songs from their profile with you.
• A truly social community-based music experience – the more friends who join your community, the more songs you can listen to.
• Easily discover music that your BBM Music friends are listening to, and comment on your friends’ songs and playlists.
• You can 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. This provides users with a chronological view of community updates, including who added new friends, which songs were added or removed, which playlists were created and what comments were made by your BBM Music friends.
• 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.

Cloud music service provider Omnifone is providing RIM with a back-end solution for the BBM Music service, which delivers content management, music hosting and reporting functions based on Omnifone’s technology.

As part of RIM’s proprietary service, Omnifone's back-end solution helps facilitate the delivery of a full music catalogue to BBM Music users and comprehensive compensation reporting for copyright holders.

“A major component of online music continues to be about community, and the ability to discover new artists and music through word of mouth,” stated Rob Wells, president of Global Digital Business for Universal Music Group.

“BBM Music dynamically and elegantly integrates the excitement of this social music discovery process with a high quality music service, enabling tens of millions of BlackBerry users to experience new music and to share those experiences with their friends virtually anywhere and at anytime.”  

“We are pleased to be partnering with Research In Motion on their BBM Music service. RIM and its large base of BlackBerry Messenger users represent an exciting platform for expanding the reach of commercial digital music around the world,” added Thomas Hesse, president of Global Digital Business, US Sales and Corporate Strategy for Sony Music Entertainment.

“The combination of a premium music solution and instant messaging will enable viral music discovery and emphasize the social power of digital music. It also offers an effective way of serving younger consumers by integrating music into the fabric of an important hub of their digital activity.”

A closed beta trial of the BBM Music service is starting today 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 $4.99 (around R36) in Australia, Canada, Columbia, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, the UK and the US. No local release info is available yet.  

For more information about BBM Music and to sign up to be notified of its availability in your country, visit RIM’s website.

In related news the Canadian tablet and smartphone maker also recently unveiled three new BlackBerry smartphones, the new BlackBerry Curve 9350, BlackBerry Curve 9360 and BlackBerry Curve 9370.