The BlackBerry App World and the mobile music stores new ecosystem

Posted on 04. Apr, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci in Mobile Stores

It’s StoreMania again. This time thanks to RIM.

At CTIA, the new Blackbery App World was announced. The store has hundreds of apps available at launch, and RIM says it expects around a thousand to be available in its first week. Like Apple’s store, RIM’s offers both free and paid apps that download directly to your device.

The Blackbery Store has a nice inteface, but some oddities. The main one is that it is only available for relatively recent BlackBerry models–the ones with trackballs, starting with the Pearl which means that millions of people with older models can’t use the app store.

Besides the details, what’s interesting is that as for the IPhone, RIM plans to focus its Store on Music. RIM’s president Mike Lizaridis pitched the Store in his CTIA keynote by pointing out that not only is it sponsoring U2’s upcoming world tour, but there’s a ton of music applications: Slacker, Pandora and Shazam, iheartradio and Will.i.am’s DipDiv. RIM has also secured an exclusive with Ticketmaster, which allows people to buy tickets to shows. In addition, BlackBerry is supporting both Windows Media Player and iTunes to allow people to get songs on to the device and is rolling out Bluetooth devices that are plugged into your car or home stereo, so you can listen to your music on your BlackBerry without having to dock it.

It didn’t take long for the Iphone App Store to become a paradigm shifter in the music industry and mobile entertainment space.

A few milestones from the last few months

-Pink! launches a branded Iphone app, FunHouse, to promote her new album. The app is sort of bare-bobe, with 30-second previews of songs from the album, photos, news and a discography and obviously direct links to buy Pink’s back catalog from the iTunes Store.

-SnowPatrol follow with the release a 3-D interactive booklet, a very artsy one with lyrics and videos.

-David Cook sells his single LightOn as an app with a virtual lighter, for double its normal Itunes price

-it’s then the turn of the Nine Inch Nails with their edition of the Guitar Hero-like app for the iPhone and iPod Touch which lets you tap along to 13 songs from The Slip and Ghosts I-IV on the famous game’s three note tracks. It costs $4.99 in the US, and ties in with a competition for NIN gig tickets and a signed guitar.

-Innovation continues with the Deadmau5’s iPhone app ($3 on iTunes) that lets you load any of 10 quantized Deadmau5 tracks into a dual-track playback engine, which works like a professional DJ software while being easy enough for anyone to experiment with.

-In February The President of the United States of America release four albums as an iPhone application that costs just $3. The app includes the four albums whose rights are owned by the band, as well as rare recordings, live tracks and demos. They’re all streamable playlists – which doesn’t come as a surprise since their singer is also a mobile music veteran, now VP of Business Development at Melodeo (the maker of nuTsie a software application that can stream your iTunes playlists to any web-connected PC, your Blackberry and your Facebook profile).

-It’s then the turn of free apps for Lady Gaga, the Pussycat Dolls, Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em, the All American Rejects, and Keri Hilson. The apps include video content from the artists’ Kyte channels, as well as branding and advertising, click-through links to buy music and merchandise, a built-in RSS reader to pull in news updates, and community features like chat, comments and sharing. Kyte has a partnership with both Sony Music and Universal Music Group.

As predicted by Wired, the AppStore has changed the way music is merchindised and bands interact with their fans. RIM is following and for sure it doesnt want to be just a follower. So more is to be expected.