Apple alum Calamera to head up Thumbplay Music

Mobile entertainment destination Thumbplay announced the appointment of Pablo Calamera to the newly created position of chief technology officer, where he will supervise all of the firm's tech initiatives, including its fledgling Thumbplay Music effort. Calamera arrives at Thumbplay after a decade with Apple, where he oversaw technology development of the computing giant's cloud-based data-syncing effort MobileMe--he also served stints with Danger and WebTV.

Thumbplay Music launched in private beta in early January--the cloud-based subscription service promises unlimited, on-demand access to millions of songs from content partners including Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI Music, along with CD Baby, INgrooves, IODA, The Orchard and a host of additional independent labels. Recent agreements with 20 additional partners boosted the number of tracks under license to more than 8 million. Thumbplay Music is presently available on an invitation-only basis on select BlackBerry smartphones--a downloadable Adobe AIR desktop version is also available on both PCs and Macs. Thumbplay said the app will launch across iPhone, Android and additional BlackBerry smartphones within the first quarter.

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