There’s no question that BlackBerry smartphones are great messaging devices, but it seems RIM isn’t quite content with this accolade as their now also planning to open up a music download service for their loyal customers.
According to Financial Times, a yet-to-be-named download service will be launched in September 2009. UK-based company 7Digital is already on-board this project, and is currently working on an app that will allow BlackBerry users to connect to the said music store on their RIM smartphones. While the company maybe based in the UK and the service likely to be initially available in Europe first, RIM plans to offer around 6 million songs available for download over-the-air in US and Canada aside from the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. What’s even better is that these songs apparently won’t come with DRM protection. As far as pricing goes, a single track is expected to retail for just $0.99 while a whole album will cost $9.99.
RIM certainly has some pretty interesting stuff going on here that will definitely add more functionality to their collection of smartphones. As to whether this can match up with Nokia’s Comes-With-Music service and Apple’s iTunes store, it’s still questionable, but we at least applaud RIM for their effort in trying to keep in step with the competition.
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