Music service for BlackBerry launched

Research in Motion launched a new service that allows BlackBerry users to share music with friends. BBM Music allows BlackBerry users to select 50 songs from a catalog of millions of tracks for their own personal playlist, says Alistair Mitchell, RIM’s vice president of BBM platform and integrated services. BBM users can share songs from that list with friends who use the instant messenger service. Users will pay $4.99 a month for the BBM Music service. A closed trial run of the service began Thursday in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K., leading up to a wide release in 18 countries overall later this year. RIM is hoping the program will leverage the 45 million BBM users to help the Waterloo, Ontario-based company to compete with its rivals, Apple’s iPhones and Google Android devices. RIM says music can be saved to smartphones to listen to while offline, and users can keep track of how many friends are listening to their tracks.