BlackBerry to shutter its BBM music sharing service on June 2
Nearly two years after its launch, the mobile music service that lets subscribers share songs with each other is being terminated.
BlackBerry's BBM music sharing service will be no more.
As of June 2 the service will be shuttered, according to Mobilesyrup. BlackBerry sent out a mass e-mail to all of its BBM Music subscribers today informing them of the news.
Here's a portion of BlackBerry's e-mail, according to Mobilesyrup:
BBMT 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.Though BBM Music is going away, you can still listen to great music on your BlackBerry. We're giving you a 30-day pass to Rdio, which gives you unlimited, on-demand access to more than 18 million songs, including the latest hits and classic albums.
BlackBerry launched BBM Music in 2011 with the hopes of bolstering its Messenger service. The cloud-based service was intended to let users create an ever-evolving library of music that could be shared with other BBM Music users. The service allowed users access to 50 songs to be streamed or stored on their BlackBerry devices for a cost of $4.99 a month.
It's unclear why BlackBerry is shutting down BBM Music, it could be that the market was becoming increasingly competitive with the likes of Spotify, Rdio, Pandora, and other streaming music services.
A BlackBerry spokesperson told CNET that "after a strategic business review, it was determined that BlackBerry will no longer develop or provide support for BBM Music."
Updated April 4 at 8:15 a.m. PT with comment from a BlackBerry spokesperson.