BlackBerry will shut down a subscription service that married its BlackBerry Messenger instant messaging with online music downloads. Crystal Roberts, a spokeswoman for the company, said the decision to end BBM Music on June 2 followed a “strategic business review” by the company.
Like Apple’s attempt to turn iTunes into a social medium with Ping, BBM Music, started in 2011, was widely seen as something of a failure. Ms. Roberts declined to say how many people subscribed.
The service’s acceptance may have been limited by its complexity. Users do not purchase songs from it, as with Apple’s iTunes or with Amazon. Nor do their monthly subscription fees give them unlimited access to a large online catalog of music like that offered by Spotify.
Under BlackBerry’s system, users in the United States pay $5 a month but can pick only 50 songs. They can change only half of those songs each subsequent month.
Subscribers can download music from the 50-song playlists of other BBM Music users they know. But BlackBerry’s significant decline in the United States market reduced the utility of that feature.
Ms. Roberts said that BBM Music subscribers would be offered no-cost 30-day trial subscriptions to Rdio, an online subscription service similar to Spotify.
Source: NYTimes
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