Music Ally

Research In Motion has launched its BlackBerry App World mobile applications store this morning, aiming to do for BlackBerry what the App Store has done for iPhone. The store is an on-handset client that can be downloaded from mobile.blackberry.com, although it’s launching in the US, UK and Canada only for now.

RIM has labelled 20 applications as ‘Featured Apps’ to promote on the official App World website, and five of them are music-related. They include Clear Channel’s iheartradio, Pandora, Slacker Radio, Shazam, and VH1 Watch and Discuss (a chat app based around the music TV channel). MySpace and Facebook are also on the list.

RIM is putting a focus on music this year, having signed sponsorship rights to U2’s next tour, while working with Will.I.Am on his innovative Band To Hand application – although it’s unclear whether that’s part of the App World launch or not.

We’ll have a proper hands-on and details of other music apps later today. The store uses PayPal as its payment mechanism, although many of the music apps are likely to be free, judging by other app stores.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at 6:41 am and is filed under Digital Music News, Gadgets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.