First Impressions: BBM Music Will Be Successful
While many in the blogosphere are already taking shots at RIM's new BBM Music service after only being out for a few days, it seems that all BlackBerry users that are actually using BBM Music love it. The feedback from within the app is outstandingly positive. I don't necessarily blame too many people for doubting RIM's latest music service announcement. I too was extremely hesitant about accepting this idea until I tried it for the first time.
Research In Motion's plan upon releasing BBM Music publicly, is to allow every new user access for one free month of service to test out the app, invite friends, get your first 50 songs; etc. This will be when users are hooked. Yes this service will be $4.99/month according to rumors and to most, paying $5/month for 50 songs doesn't really make sense. The point though is that it's not just 50 songs that you're getting. It's actually a lot more.
Full Sharing Experience
When opening BBM Music for the first time, you can go two ways. You can either add songs or add contacts. If you choose to go the contact way, you will be adding contacts that are part of your BBM to BBM Music and automatically whatever songs they've picked get added to your Contacts music tab. In your Contacts Music tab, you have a nice list of all the songs your contacts have added. You can shuffle or play them in alphabetical order by song title if you wish.
What brings this sharing feature to the next level is that from there you can actually add their songs onto one of your playlists without needing to add any songs to your collection. In essence you don't have to listen to all of a contacts song choices to hear your favorites. You can simply pick and choose the songs you like an add them to a playlist.
Leaving comments for people
One of my favorite features so far is the ability to comment on someone's song choice or just leave a comment on their profile page. When listening to a song, there's an option to comment on the song. You can either tease someone for a funny song choice, or tell them you really love this song so they don't remove it from their collection. It's something small but it just makes the whole user experience that much cooler.
The "I haven't heard that song in forever!" feeling
We all have very diverse musical tastes. Some of us like older stuff and others like more modern music. Every person though, holds onto different songs for years for some reason. BBM Music helps you share those songs with others and have them experience that "Wow I totally forgot about that song/artist" feeling. Nothing cooler than jamming out to a song you actually like but had just slipped your mind.
Personally for me, BBM Music has helped me realize my favorite era was late 90's to early 2000's. I loved pretty much every song that came out around that time and with so many contacts that share similar tastes I have been cherry picking songs like crazy for the past two days.
BBM Music creates a BlackBerry Messenger-like addiction with a twist
It's hard to explain how this addiction works if you haven't used BBM Music, but then again most of us have a hard time explaining the BBM addiction to people that have never used it and always ask why it's so great.
I'll try and explain. You find yourself wanting to add more people to BBM Music, for obvious reasons, and this app allows you to without having to add people to your BBM. How is that possible? Well that's the twist! Thanks to the Recent Updates feature on BBM Music, you can see which contact has added whom and actually click on those people's profiles and request to add them as a contact on BBM Music to share your songs with them and in return allow them to share their collection with you. Once they approve that request you can actually add them to BBM from there if you choose to. It's not required to though and acts as completely separate app in that sense.
You will also be constantly checking what new songs people have added. If you think about the fact that there's a potential of 50 songs per contact at your disposal, you might want to be checking what's new with everyone's collection frequently. I currently have access to 1022 songs. True, not all of them are geared to my liking, but MOST of them are.
I haven't even touched on the great looking UI, the music catalog and the 2.5 million songs available but we're hoping you can get a different take on what, in my opinion, will make BBM Music successful once it's out and being tried by BlackBerry users.
I will say this, BBM Music is not a perfect app. It does have its flaws that need to be worked out and for some the pricing will be too high. Let's remember though, it's only been out for a few days and is technically still in beta, meaning it'll get better. The feedback that's being given is awesome. People are loving the experience so far and it can only get better from here.
