BlackBerry has announced plans to discontinue their BBM Music service starting June 2, 2013. The Canadian handset maker recently announced the decision in an e-mail sent to subscribers. The message notes that paying customers won't be billed for May and that they will receive a free one-month subscription to Rdio for the inconvenience.
Many argued that the music service was doomed from the start thanks to a rather unique business model. For $4.99 per month, subscribers could download 50 tracks to their handset from a catalog of millions of songs. If any of your BBM contacts also signed up for the service, you'd get access to their 50 songs and vice versa.
The potential to amass a large collection of music was there but you'd need to have a lot of friends using the platform and the service to do so. As well all know, BlackBerry was already on the decline by the time the service launched in August 2011. What's more, competing services offer unlimited access to their entire catalog without any odd restrictions.
Fortunately this won't affect BB10 customers as the service never made it to the new platform. There is, however, a bit of concern as Rdio doesn't yet have an app for the new OS and it's still up in the air as to whether or not Spotify will release an app.
BlackBerry recommends that customers delete the BBM Music app after the service is discontinued.