Music download service for BlackBerry
BlackBerry owners may be feeling like they have nothing to brag about now that the iPhone has added connectivity to Exchange e-mail systems--the BlackBerry's bread-and-butter feature.
Soon, BlackBerry users will have an over-the-air music download store designed just for them.
(Credit: Research In Motion)Not to worry. By April, Blackberry owners will have something the iPhone still lacks--the ability to download songs over the air from any location with cellular access. Canadian company Puretracks, which has licensed more than two million songs from all four major labels and plenty of indies, announced plans to launch a mobile store for the BlackBerry family of devices in April.
The files will be in the AAC format used by iTunes, which offers higher quality at small file sizes than MP3. But unlike iTunes, none of the songs will be encumbered by DRM, allowing users to transfer them to as many computers as they like. Puretracks also promises to make a Wi-Fi enabled version of the store for BlackBerry devices with built-in Wi-Fi connectivity--a direct competitor to the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store. No word yet on download pricing.
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Matt Rosoff is an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, where he covers Microsoft's consumer products and corporate news. He's written about the technology industry since 1995, and reviewed the first Rio MP3 player for CNET.com in 1998. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mattrosoff. 
