Research In Motion teams with Omnifone for cloud-based BBM Music

Research In Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) unveiled BBM Music, its much-rumored entrance into the cloud music race enabling consumers to build evolving, community-based music libraries shared among their friends.

RIM will charge $4.99 per month for BBM Music.

Integrated with RIM's BlackBerry Messenger instant messaging service, which connects 45 million users, BBM Music touts social and viral discovery tools alongside millions of songs from major labels Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI Music. Users build personal music profiles featuring 50 of their favorite songs, with the flexibility to swap out as many as 25 songs each month--as BBM Messenger contacts join the user's BBM Music Community, music from each new profile becomes available to all other community members.

BBM Music users may listen to full-length tracks from friends' profiles, access content offline, comment on songs and playlists, create multiple playlists, and set all songs in the shared library to shuffle mode. The BBM Music app also supplies a visual timeline depicting recent updates within the community, complete with a chronological view of new user additions, song additions and subtractions, playlists and comments.

BBM Music is now in closed beta trials in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, rolling out worldwide later this year. RIM will charge $4.99 per month. Cloud music service provider Omnifone will handle content management, music hosting and reporting functions as well as compensation reporting for copyright holders.

BBM Music brings RIM in line with archrivals Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), which announced their own cloud music initiatives earlier this year. The BlackBerry platform continues to fall out of consumer favor in the U.S., representing 11 percent of smartphones sold nationwide in the second quarter, according to NPD Group data issued earlier this week. Fifty-two percent of all smartphones sold to U.S. consumers during the second quarter run Google's Android mobile operating system, up 19 percent year-over-year, while Apple's iOS grew 7 percent over the past year and follows in second place at 29 percent market share.

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