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BlackBerry to close BBM Music

BlackBerry has annoucned is shutting down its smartphone music subscription service BB Music on June 2nd.

An email has been sent to current subscribers stating: ‘BBM 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.’ via CrackBerry.

From launch in 2011 BBM Music was a bit different to other music offering,  designed as a social music service. For a monthly subscription users could choose 50 tracks to listen to offline, but connecting with friends brought access to their songs – so the more friends the bigger your music collection.

BBM Music

BBM Music was an interesting idea, but faced stiff competition from Spotify and free services like TuneIn Radio. It wasa also unique to BlackBerry so its success depended on uptake by other on BlackBerry users – and it seems not enough people were using it. The service was available for BlackBerry OS devices, such as the BlackBerry Bold 9900, but tellingly there was no confirmation it would be available for new phones running BlackBerry 10 – such as the BlackBerry Z10.

After June 2nd BlackBerry customers will need to delete the app, after that BlackBerry is offering customers a 30-day trial to Rdio an on-demand music streaming service with around 18 million tracks.

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