[OniMessiah]

Here's an article that was published this morning from PCWorld (not that I'm a fan of theirs, just thought I would share):

5 Reasons RIM's BBM Music Service Will Flop | PCWorld

[howarmat]

they might have 17% marketshare but another article mentioned there are about 55 million active BBM users which is still quite a few. Many of which are no where in the US to be seen. I have seen huge decline where I work and 1-2 of my friends still have BBs. everyone else has moved on. For this to be beneficial you are going to need to have friends still using a BB.

[HeezyBear]

I don't like the idea of having to pay for a service that requires many other people I know to also be paying for the service to take full advantage of it. That's just my opinion, though.

[Witmen]

At first I thought it was gonna flop also. Now I'm not so sure. If you look on crackberry or app world or mobi hand you see people posting their PINs all the time trying to get more friends. If you are a BBM music subscriber it will help you get a lot more friends. People will add you just to get your songs if they also use the service. I can see people out there being desperate enough to pay the 5 bucks a month, enjoy the service and get a big boost to their friend list as a bonus.

I mean for the service to be useful at all you need friends who also use it. So posting your PIN some where and saying you have BBM music will probably guarantee an add request from every single person who also has BBM music. That might save it.

[Mark_Venture]

$5 a month for this?

Did a Rhapsody app ever materialize outside of "beta" for blackberry? Is it stable? because for $10 per month, unlimited streaming of tracks, unlimited download of DRM'd WMA's which can be side loaded onto the BB, etc.. is probably a better way to go.

[laurah2215]

I'm torn. Personally, the price tag turns me off. However, once you look at it it's actually got a lot of neat features which give it potential. It's really too early to tell.

[trsbbs]

It might catch on in other parts of the world, but here in the US I do not think
it will find much success.

Too high for the cost and not enough on the return for the music lover.

They took something simple and made it hard and too limited for the user.

Tim

[trsbbs]

It will fail in the US.

Wasted time and resources RIM will have very little if any return
on investment.

It might play in Cambodia but won't fly in the States..

Tim

[brucep1]

have to agree...to make this useful, not only do all of your friends still need to have blackberries (for bbm, which none of them do), but they all have to pay $5 a month.

in the US, this is destined to fail..But then again, who knows..I never thought the pet rock would catch on

[Wretch 12]

This would be nice if it was integrated with a service like Grooveshark.

[habicht]

I think it can work!

Ping fails, because you are not able to share music! With bbm music you are able to really share music! Share costs and share music!

Of course in NA (maybe UK) you have a lot of nice and cheap streaming services, but this services are not available in other countries! So if RIM could make this a global music service, it will be a huge and a big selling point for their devices!

I'm sure later this year we will see this service on playbook and on qnx-powered media gateway (like apple TV) for listening on HiFi

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[CrackBerry Kevin]

Wow. What a stupid article. If I meet this person at a conference it'll be hard to keep from punching him in the face.

[kcdist]

Wow. What a stupid article. If I meet this person at a conference it'll be hard to keep from punching him in the face.

Whoa! Time to lay off the steroids for awhile!

[trsbbs]

Wow. What a stupid article. If I meet this person at a conference it'll be hard to keep from punching him in the face.

The author could of put it in a more "delicate" way for ya then what he said:

"Desperate times call for desperate measures, and "desperate" is just about the only word to describe RIM's new bound-for-failure cloud-based music service, BBM Music"

Some of his facts are off, but in the end it will not hit the top ten in the US.

Tim

[frankzaman]

RIM doesn't need to score a homerun in the states with this, it is part of the overall strategy. In the US it may do very well with current BB users and especially teens. If all this does is solidify and extend their teen base it will be worth it. For adults it may not seem over compelling to join, but if some of the cool kids have this and are sharing music, it may start driving market share gains in that segment. And keeping customers is far easier than taking them from other platforms.

Also, look at the countries where they are releasing this: many of them are where BB is going off the charts because of BBM. Many people in those countries don't have Macs or ipods, so BBM music may be the first decent option for music they've had. Five dollors a month is cheaper than buying another ipod when you've already got a phone that plays music.

RIM's advantage has always been ultra fast data transmission, and it's good to see them starting to leverage that advantage to start differentiating themselves in ways that consumers will care about.

[Taxman45]

There's more to this BBM Music than the pundits are seeing. Who would have thought Twitter was going to be such a big deal. You can't evaluate this service from afar. Once you start using it, you'll realize you don't want to stop using it. If you don't have a BB maybe it's not going to make a difference, but if you do have a BB, you're going to want it.

[howarmat]

only if your friends have a BB. if they dont then YOU wont want it either

[alegs]

It is very easy to find new friends using the service. I got invited last night and already have access to 1000+ songs. And none of the friends I share with were friends before yesterday. New friends and new music for me to listen to. I will pay $5 for that.

[misdeismo]

for this to be appealing, stop thinking only about your actual friends which may be a small circle of bbm users but rather think of it as a way to meet people.

[WillieLee]

Wow. What a stupid article. If I meet this person at a conference it'll be hard to keep from punching him in the face.

PC World has really stepped up the negative pieces on RIM over the last year. It's seems to be just an attempt to drive traffic as they offer very little insight.

[cas118]

@misdeismo - Exactly!

BBM Music takes ZERO effort to get new friends onto your list. I have 10-20 BBM contacts, and about 40 BBM Music friends. Only 2 of my BBM contacts have BBM music. Work it out!

Requests are coming in left, right and centre and the really good part of it is the social aspect: Sharing your music with others and listening to others' libraries means your exposing yourself to music which you wouldn't usually listen to. I'm finding myself turned on to a lot of artists that I don't give the time of day usually.

I was cynical at this announcement - but I think that this could be a really addictive service. I'm seriously considering ponying up the subscription when it goes public, and until now I've never felt the appeal of any streaming music services.

Ultimately, the article is misled about the core features of BBM Music. Right now, I'm struggling to work out how it CAN fail - this is a step in the right direction for RIM as far as I'm concerned.

[BBThemes]

only if your friends have a BB. if they dont then YOU wont want it either

nope your dead wrong. you can have people in BBM Music that arent in your BBM contacts, so it isnt just limited to your circle of friends.

much like pcworld, you should use the service before commenting on its pros/cons

[soccernamlak]

I'm not sure yet whether this will be a great thing, a good thing, or a bad thing from RIM, but how I look at it compared to other music services is this:


Most streaming music services (Spotify, Grooveshark, Rhapsody, etc.) charge around $10 or so a month for access to unlimited streaming/songs typically. Which is great: you can listen to whatever you want when you want. But what are you going to listen to? The music you like of course! But that's it. You might click on a featured song or two, but mostly will stick with your style and suggested artists.

BBM Music on the other hand means you're interacting with people who have completely different musical tastes than you. Which means while you only get 50 songs that you like a month to listen to, you can access completely different 50 song sets from other users. Essentially, it is perhaps an easier way to expand your musical plate and find out that hey, trance isn't so bad, or that you really don't like casiocore music.

The point is BBM Music is trying to bring a more social exchange of music in the streaming market rather than just dumping 10 million songs at your fingertips. I think both have their advantages.

The only thing that worries me about the success of this service is:

- 50 songs a month isn't a whole lot (at least to a music lover like myself); however, I can see a good number of people only listening to their favorite 50/75 (with swap) songs a month on repeat anyway.
- $5 a month. Possibly cheap, but possibly expensive because it relies on my third worry, which is
- It requires BBM connections. Sadly, how many people use BlackBerrys is very dependent on your country, age-group, and surroundings. A teenage British resident might be able to easily pull 100 friends in (5000 songs a month). But a private University student in the US might find that more people prefer iOS or Android devices.

I guess it boils down to how you want to use BBM Music. If it's within friends only, it depends on how many of your friends have a BlackBerry. If you're willing you could hook up with random people (like here at CrackBerry) and meet new people, but it is what it is on that aspect.

I guess my take from this is we'll see how it works after a few months....

[BBThemes]

- It requires BBM connections. Sadly, how many people use BlackBerrys is very dependent on your country, age-group, and surroundings. A teenage British resident might be able to easily pull 100 friends in (5000 songs a month). But a private University student in the US might find that more people prefer iOS or Android devices.

but thats just not true, lets say me and you are BBM contacts, and i add you to BBMMusic, you can then see who i am sharing with and add them (without having to add them to BBM itself) and then when you add them you can see their friends and so on, so theoretically you could have just 1 contact on BBM (thats using BBMMusic) and have hundreds of people whose music you share.

BBM Music is NOT limited to your BBM contact list.

[donnation]

It will flop here in the US.