BBM Music now rocking BlackBerry App World

RIM's BBM Music is now ready for public consumption. The simply titled mobile app is hitting the company's App World today for users in the US, Canada and Australia -- with more areas coming soon, naturally. BBM Music lets BlackBerry owners add 50 songs from a choice of millions and harnesses the social networking capabilities of BBM, giving Premium users access to music from their friends' music profiles.

 

Cell Phones : BBM Music gets official for BlackBerry

Nothing warms our hearts quite like the thought of corporate suits and government workers pumping out the tunes of Iris DeMent and Amy Martin as they scurry throughout their busy days. As we've previously speculated, a new service for BlackBerry Messenger -- dubbed BBM Music -- has now become real official. For $5 per month, users may keep up to 50 songs in their personal library, which is kinda reminiscent of the wistful days filled with 128MB MP3 players. Fortunately, it gets better. A social component allows you to add BBM Music friends, which gives you access to their current 50 songs, too -- and serves as a real incentive to grow your social circle. Once you get bored of your jam selection, up to 25 songs per month can be swapped out for new ones, and your current library can be stored locally on the handset. The new service begins today in closed beta for residents of the US, Canada and the UK, but more countries will be added down the road.

 

Press Release

RIM Announces BBM Music - A New Social Music Sharing and Discovery Service

New Cloud-Based Music Service Makes Music a Social Experience

Waterloo, ON - 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 and viral 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 catalog with millions of songs from leading music companies - 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 at Research In Motion. "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 include:
- Music made social – BBM Music is a cloud-based, social music service that allows you to share and discover music with your friends, creating a continually evolving music library:
- 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.
- Enjoy 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. It gives you 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.

"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," stated Thomas Hesse, President, Global Digital Business, U.S. Sales and Corporate Strategy, 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 dynamic social music experience is a powerful way for our artists to connect with fans and also for fans to discover music by interacting with each other," said Michael Nash, Executive Vice President, Digital Strategy & Business Development, Warner Music Group. "Addressing more than 45 million BlackBerry Messenger users with a service tailor-made for its mobile community, BBM Music has the opportunity to reach a broad and engaged audience."

"We are very excited to work with Research In Motion to bring our artists‟ music to BBM‟s huge and very loyal user base," said Mark Piibe, Executive Vice President of Global Business Development at EMI Music. "BBM Music‟s unique social discovery experience offers fans a great new way to discover music, share their favorite tracks with their friends and build a stronger connection with the artists they love."

"The widespread adoption of mobile devices provides the perfect foundation for consuming and sharing music. Brands that want to deliver a unique interactive experience must create services that are mobile, social, and contextual," said Maribel Lopez Principal at Lopez Research and Constellation Research Group.

A closed (limited) 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 USD* in Australia, Canada, Columbia, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Cell Phones : The Grammar of BBM

 

 

In these times of ever-shortening missives of 140 characters or less, people are cramming more and more information into less and less space. This shortening of words and phrases can lead to disastrous consequences. Take this text message for example, "n e ice cream left?" You'll notice that the person texting has used the exact same number of characters to type "n e" as he would have to type "any." This young texter now looks like a complete fool and faces banishment from his humble seaside village.
We of the Society of People Who Wish Everyone Could Just Use the Same Words but It's Probably Not Going to Happen Because Honestly? Who's Going to Listen to Us? Societies (it's a big society) have put together this handy guide to the proper use of the noun and verb forms of BBM.

BBM - Noun - acronym for BlackBerry Messenger, a highly popular messaging app exclusive to the BlackBerry smartphone

BBM - verb - to send a message via BlackBerry Messenger or to BlackBerry Message (where Message is a verb)
 

BBM'd or BBMd

When speaking of sending messages via BlackBerry Messenger, it is important to use the correct punctuation and capitalization in order to make sure you are properly understood. For example, if you were speaking of a sending a BBM in the past, you could use a sentence such as "I BBM'd Beth yesterday, but she hasn't read my message yet."
Note the apostrophe and then "d" following the BBM. Rather than stating "I sent Beth a message using the BlackBerry Messenger application; it has not yet indicated that she has read said message," you can simply write "BBM'd Beth yesterday, but no R, just D"
The shift key and the apostrophe key are on entirely opposite sides of the keyboard. For some people, this pressing of two separate keys to produce merely a single character upon the screen is an almost Herculean feat. For these people, BBM'd can be shorted to BBMd. Please note that capitalization is key to this abbreviation as "BBMD" and "bbmd" are complete gibberish.
 

BBM'ing or BBMing

 

Also of note is how to describe the actual act of sending and a BBM and/or having a full conversation over the messaging platform. In the sentence, "John is BBM'ing his wife before we go out for beers" this indicates that John is currently in the process of sending a message to his wife using the BBM application to message between the two BlackBerry smartphones, letting her know that he may be home from work a little late
The sentence "John is BBM'ing with his wife because we went out for beers" indicates that John neglected to tell his wife that he was going out with the guys and thus would be home late. The "with" indicates a conversation happening in real time between John and his wife. From the fierce typing and disappointed sighs, it would appear that John's wife has sent him pictures of her after dinner plans. Unfortunately, it appears Mrs. John now has a headache.
Again, as with BBM'd, BBM'ing can be shortened to BBMing. In rare cases where six characters are simply too many. BBMg can be substituted. Please note that anyone not reading this article will have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. BBM'ing your parents the phrase "BBMg BF tlk l8r" will almost certainly earn a lecture on how much college costs and/or the value of using real, actual words.
 

BBM'ing Multimedia

 

To speak or write about sending picture or video over BlackBerry Messenger uses a very similar grammar structure as sending a message. BlackBerry Messenger sends pictures, video, and audio in pretty much the same way as it sends text, thus the grammar needs only a slight adjustment.
Incorrect: John just sent me a text message with a picture of what his girlfriend was wearing last night. That was worth the 40 cents it cost to receive it!
Correct: Hunter just BBM'd me a pic of his girlfriend. I don't have to worry about text messaging charges or wait while the resized picture is reassembled from tiny pieces of no more than 160 bytes. Because pictures, audio, and video sent via BBM travel through the data network, I get the original picture. This is going on my wallpaper.

BlackBerry Apps : Rumor - BlackBerry Messenger launching for Android and iOS?

That’s what the latest leaked rumor suggests.  It sounds crazy and far fetched as I never expected RIM to give into putting BBM out on other devices.  According to BGR, RIM is planning to put out BlackBerry Messenger for other platforms such as Android and iOS.  It’s suggested that Android is definitely a go for easy open source application development.  Then iOS may come later along the way.

So how will it work as far as PINs go?  Will users be able to purchase a PIN and then keep it for life?  Will it not require a PIN anymore?  I have mixed feelings about BBM going outside of BlackBerry.  I guess it would be cool using it on other devices, but I feel like doing so will indeed brush people off of BlackBerry to Android devices and the iPhone.  What’s RIM planning for future?
I understand there are other cross platform messengers out there including Kik which RIM is in a lawsuit with and WhatsApp Messenger.  Maybe RIM is trying to do away with all these other competitors and become numero uno across the board.  How do you feel about BBM on other devices?

Blackberry Apps : Leaked: BlackBerry Messenger 5.0.1.46

You can download it over the air using the link below. Let me know if you notice any changes!

Download BlackBerry Messenger 5.0.1.46 >>

New BBM Spam: Message from “Jim Balsamic” says to forward message or pay $25 penalty!

New BBM Spam: Message from “Jim Balsamic” says to forward message or pay $25 penalty!

by Mac Jadalhack

Well they could of at least spelled the name right. The man isn’t the founder of vinegar. I’m not sure if the spelling was done on purpose or not, but it is funny. For those who don’t know, RIM’s co-CEO is Jim BALSILLIE, not Balsamic! So this mass message as seen in the screenshot above has been circulating around since yesterday. I was emailed it once before from an anonymous readers, then woke up this morning only to see that a few of my friends received it. Again, it was just way to funny seeing “Jim Balsamic.” The message says that you must forward that message to all of your friends or else you get booted off BBM and have to pay $25 extra each month on your bill. That’s just terrible.

Have any of you received this one? Anyone fall for it?