BlackBerry maker cues up BBM Music

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion is to launch a music subscription service, BBM Music.

BBM Music went on trial on Thursday in the UK, US and Canada, and is expected to roll out to 18 countries later this year. For $4.99 a month – UK prices have yet to be confirmed – BBM users will have access to 50 songs.

Users can build up their playlist by sharing with friends, and have access to all 50 songs on a friend's profile. Once a month, customers can change 25 of the songs on their list.

The service was built by British music services company Omnifone, which has licensed 10m tracks across all music genres from classical to contemporary rock and pop, with new music generally available on the day of release.

The range of music is designed to appeal to RIM's 45m BlackBerry Messenger users worldwide, who range from older corporate customers to teenagers and students.

The music, licensed from Universal Music Group, Sony, Warner Music Group and EMI, is essentially rented – it can be downloaded onto phones and listened to when the handset is offline, but cannot be transferred to other devices.

"A major component of online music continues to be about community, and the ability to discover new artists and music through word of mouth," said Universal executive Rob Wells. "BBM Music dynamically and elegantly integrates the excitement of this social music discovery process with a high-quality music service."

It is understood that RIM will offer a free trial period in certain markets. Once users have built up their circle of friends, charging will begin.

Omnifone, based in London, last year signed a deal to provide a music subscription service to Sony, which will come pre-installed on 350m Sony games consoles, televisions and other devices over the next few years. It has built similar services for Hewlett-Packard. Takeup is estimated to be low at under 1m paying subscribers worldwide, but the company is hoping its deal with RIM will boost user numbers.

Digital music subscription has yet to make a significant return for record companies. Spotify is currently the world's largest and fastest growing subscriber service.

Leaked numbers from the recording industry suggest it has 4.67m European users in total, but only 1.54m of those are paying customers – its basic service is free.

Spotify is pushing for more paying customers – a subscription costs from £4.99 a month, in return for which access to songs is unlimited and there are no advertisements. It added half a million subscribers this spring after limiting the amount of music available for free, but saw overall user numbers fall by around 1m.

Spotify launched in the US in mid-July and estimates put its paying users at 175,000, with a total of 1.4m users. Its most established US rival, Rhapsody, has more than 800,000 paying customers, but took several years to achieve that number.

"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 the RIM co-chief executive, Mike Lazaridis.

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