Music Ally

We thought it came out weeks ago, but apparently not. U2 has now launched its long-trailed BlackBerry application, which offers photos, videos, news, song lyrics and track samples from the band’s No Line On The Horizon album. It’s free, and available on RIM’s BlackBerry App World.

There are also click-through features to buy the album or individual tracks. BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion is sponsoring the current U2 tour, so it ties into that. There will also be a second phase for the app focused more around social networking features, although no launch date has been announced.

“With today’s announcement, we are reinventing the album experience for the digital age,” says RIM’s VP of global alliances Jeff McDowell. A more accurate summary would be to say that RIM is trying to reinvent the album marketing experience for the digital age – the U2 app would be a lot more interesting if it included the full album with all this extra content, rather than just clips.

However, RIM will be hoping that its U2 collaboration (as well as the app it made with Black Eyed Peas mainman Will.I.Am) will spur more artists to launch promotional apps for BlackBerry. Currently, iPhone is getting much more love from the music industry as far as marketing apps go.

Research In Motion’s music push will soon include a dedicated BlackBerry download store, courtesy of UK firm 7Digital. It plans to launch its store in September with a catalogue of around six million songs in the US, UK, Canada, France, Italy, Germany and Spain.

Tracks will be sold as MP3s and will be downloadable over the air. Songs are expected to cost £0.79 / $0.99, and albums £7.99 / $9.99. “We see the BlackBerry application as very much an impulse thing,” says 7Digital boss Ben Drury, making it clear there’ll be no Comes With Music style unlimited service.

The store will take the form of an application, distributed through RIM’s BlackBerry App World. It raises the question of whether this is an exclusive deal, or whether other music retailers – Amazon, for example – could launch their own store apps for BlackBerry.

Research In Motion is ploughing big bucks into its sponsorship of the upcoming U2 tour, so what does it have planned on the content side of things? Canadian DJ Alan Cross has uncovered some hints, after chatting to Bono at a gig and asking him about the RIM deal.

“I’m very excited about this: Research in Motion is going to give us what Apple wouldn’t – access to their labs and their people so we can do something really spectacular,” said the singer. Cross asked if he meant a U2 app that would let fans interact with the band during the tour. “You’re not far off,” replied Bono.

Which is great, although we can’t help thinking it would be significantly more spectacular if fans who didn’t own BlackBerries were allowed to join in too.

Former Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell is the latest star to record a track with Timbaland for Verizon Wireless’ BlackBerry Storm music promotion.

The song, Stop Me, will be debuted live tonight at a gig in Chicago, and will be available to download by Storm users on Verizon shortly afterwards. Cornell follows Rihanna and the Jonas Brothers in taking part in the promotion. The press release, amusingly, describes Cornell as “the architect of grunge”.

Well, that’s certainly a title. The scheme is the latest venture into music for BlackBerry firm Research In Motion, which is also sponsoring the next U2 tour, and working with Black Eyed Peas star Will.I.Am on a BlackBerry music app called Band To Hand.

Verizon Wireless has expanded its promotional relationship with producer Timbaland, and has brought Research In Motion into the deal. Timbaland will be recording a series of music tracks with guest artists on Verizon’s Mobile Recording Studio Bus, and they’ll then be made available for free to BlackBerry Storm smartphone owners.

First up is Rihanna, who’s getting an exclusive remix of her Rehab single. More songs will follow in the coming months – although while they’ll debut for the Storm on a dedicated website, they’ll later be available to all Verizon customers via its V CAST music service.

The news is further evidence of BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion’s desire to engage more with the music industry – even if it’s not directly involved in this particular deal. BlackBerry co-CEO Jim Balsillie gave a keynote interview at MidemNet recently, although he could’ve done with a few announcements like this on the day.

Research In Motion is one of the lead sponsors of MidemNet this year, and CEO Jim Balsillie has jetted in to talk about BlackBerry music, and RIM’s work with the music industry. Announcements? Partnerships? New devices, even? It’ll hopefully be a good one. So here goes…

Ralph Simon, who’s interviewing Balsillie, says there will be some “important announcements” during the session and claims that Jim is “the most music savvy executive in the handset space”. Oh, and he changed his entire schedule in order to fly from Canada to the Led Zeppelin reunion gig last year.

Simon kicks off by claiming that “today, we’re at the start of what I call the birth of digital music 2.0″, and that he’s going to grill Balsillie to back up his theory. Alright then…

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