RIM’s BBM Music app finally goes live, emphasizes song sharing

Research in Motion has finally launched its BBM Music app out of beta, giving its BlackBerry users a social way to listen to music on their devices, the company announced Wednesday.

RIM first showed-off its new BBM Music app back in late August, but it is just now rolling out to all users. The service costs $5 a month and works differently than other music services.

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Each paid user of BBM Music can pick 50 songs to post to their BlackBerry Messenger profile, and anyone who is friends with that user can then listen to the posted songs. So, the more friends you have on BBM Music, the more music you can listen to. Users are allowed to swap out 25 of the posted tracks each month.

The company officially describes the service as such:

BBM Music is a BBM-connected social music service that allows BBM and BlackBerry smartphone users to discover, play and grow their music collections together. In other words, BBM Music helps you connect with your friends around music on a whole new level.

The introduction of BBM Music isn’t particularly groundbreaking, but RIM is exploring new ways to connect with (and hopefully retain) owners of its smartphones. RIM faces stiff competition from Apple’s iPhone 4S and various Samsung and Motorola Android phones, and has gone through a rough patch the past few months. Not only did the company experience a disastrous worldwide outage recently, but its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet had a considerable OS update pushed back to February.

Personally, I think the BBM Music service is going to be a considerable flop because there are already better options for on-demand music streaming for BlackBerry devices. Spotify debuted its BlackBerry app just a few weeks ago, and Rdio and Rhapsody have high-quality apps that provide a better music-focused experience. Most importantly, they don’t limit you to just 50 tracks.

Watch the offical BBM Music intro video below for more details: