I’ve often wondered why Spotify, the music streaming service high watermark, has never bothered with a BlackBerry app. It’s had iPhone, Android and Symbian apps since 2009, and even catered for webOS and Windows Mobile users too.
I’ve heard plenty of rumours that it’s been working on one, but whenever I’ve asked the company for an official comment, the response has always been not to give one.
Now, though, I realise Spotify may have had the foresight not to bother with a company and a platform doomed by sheer creative inertia. Case in point: BBM Music.
WHAT?
Does anyone else remember Comes With Music? Nokia launched the service back in 2008, promising unlimited music tracks for life. You could keep them forever, even if you ditched your Nokia phone.
It didn’t work. People just weren’t fussed about DRM (digital rights management) locked songs that could only be played on their PC or specific Nokia phones. At the start of this year, Espoo axed the service.
So let’s look at that in perspective: even before Spotify, even before smartphones were the norm, people weren’t fussed about a service with all-you-can-eat tunes that had DRM. So, how on earth does RIM expect the service to work in 2011, letting you keep just 50 tracks at a time and only change 25 every month? On your phone?
Good luck getting people to pay for the service on a monthly basis too. Nokia (smartly) factored the cost of a year’s use into the price of Pay As You Go handsets.
With BBM Music, RIM is expecting people to pay the equivalent of $4.99 (£3) per month, without an easy payment system (And that’s key – even Google is struggling to sell apps on the Android Market because people simply can’t be bothered entering their credit card details). There’s another example of a BlackBerry app that charged £3 per month for music – Last.fm. Last year, it abandoned development on the app, and withdrew it from the BlackBerry App World store.
And last time I looked, it was BlackBerry owners using BBM to specifically not pay for stuff. We asked RIM how much the service will cost in the UK when it launches, but a spokesperson declined to comment, only saying that it could vary from country to country,.
There’s something more disturbing about BBM Music as well. The idea that you can only listen to your own smorgasbord of songs, and your friends, goes against everything Spotify stands for. Yes, it lets you share must playlists easily and connects with Facebook, but you can try out playlists from anyone else too: those links are non-discriminatory.
With BBM Music, you’re almost confined to what you and your friends listens too – which could be very drab indeed. The point of music being on tap is surely eclecticism.
RIM has massively missed the point with this venture. Trying to shoehorn music into its hot property service, and suing anyone who tries to bring the idea to other smartphone platforms, reeks of desperation.
If BBM Music is RIM’s best solution in a world full of unlimited songs on tap, I’ll be there to hammer a nail in the coffin. We’re done, RIM.
