 "BlackBerry BBM Music service to be discontinued")
In a mass email that it sent out to its subscribers, BlackBerry confirmed that June 2, 2013 will be the last day of its BBM Music service, reports MobileSyrup. In the email though, the Canadian company has cited the closure date as June 2, 2013* – the asterisk states that the date may change later.
BlackBerry had announced its BBM Music service way back in August 2011 and the app was made available for download in November that year. The BBM Music service allows users to store music on a microSD card for offline listening. The premium subscription comes for a price of $4.99 (Rs 245), while it offers trial versions for up to two months in US as well as Canada and one month in Australia. There’s the free version too, which claims to offer a similar social experience as the premium subscription, but with 30-second song previews.
The report quotes a part of the email that reads, “BBMT Music service will be discontinued as of June 2, 2013*. For paying customers, April is the last month that you will be billed. In May, as your BBM contacts stop using the service, songs in your playlists will begin to turn grey and will no longer be available. Though BBM Music is going away, you can still listen to great music on your BlackBerry. We’re giving you a 30-day pass to Rdio, which gives you unlimited, on-demand access to more than 18 million songs, including the latest hits and classic albums.”
BBM Music to be gone!
You and your group of friends can pick songs accordingly so that the collection keeps growing and so do the number of BBM Music members. Getting in touch with BBM friends and chatting within the BBM Music app in real time is also made possible.
At the time of the announcement of the service, a Wall Street Journal report had stated that there service is not designed to compete with Apple’s iTunes or Spotify but is intended for younger users to customise their phones.
It is unclear at the moment though, as to why the company is moving towards downing the shutters on this service. It may be as a result of the presence of other strong players in the market.
This year started on an eventful note for the company with the launch of its BlackBerry Z10 smartphone. The BlackBerry Z10 was announced on January 30 at an event in New York. It is the first handset by the company to run the BlackBerry 10 OS. The phone is powered by a dual-core 1.5GHz TI OMAP 4470 processor and comes with 2GB of RAM. The BlackBerry Z10 will be kept powered on by an 1800mAh battery.
Here is a quick look at some of the highlights of the Z10:
- 4.2-inch screen with a resolution of 1280 x 768
- LTE, 3G, EDGE, Wi-Fi, NFC
- GPS with A-GPS support
- Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP
- 8 megapixel AF camera with 1080p recording; 2 megapixel front facing camera with 720p recording
- 16GB internal memory, expandable up to 64GB via microSD
- MicroHDMI for AV out
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