Music For The Blackberry

Listen to Music on The Blackberry

If you have a Blackberry smartphone, you'll find many sources of quality music to listen to on the device. Some are free, others charge monthly subscriptions, still others a one-time, lifetime fee. You can sync your existing music collection to your Blackberry, but some of the free, customizable online radio services are very cool as well. You can get almost anything you want in the way of music on a Blackberry these days.

• Slacker Radio puts over 100 pre-programmed radio stations at your disposal. You can also "roll your own station", selecting a mix of artists, albums, and genres from over 2 million songs. After downloading the free Slacker app for Blackberry, the basic service is free, which gives you unlimited music on your Blackberry. Slacker subscriptions (which offer some nice perks over the free version) cost just $3.99 per month and you can start with a 7-day free trial. Slacker licenses its music directly from labels and publishers instead of going through the SoundExchange royalty clearinghouse, so it gets licenses cheaper and saves you money. One unique feature of Slacker is that you can cache several hours of music on your Blackberry, and play it back later without a wifi or mobile signal.
• Pandora is another popular source of music for the Blackberry. The free Pandora for Blackberry app lets you create a personalized radio station that will stream music to your BlackBerry. Enter the name of a favorite artist or song, and Pandora will suggest a playlist of artists and songs that you'll enjoy. It's also a great way to find artists that have similar styles to the ones you like. Like Slacker, there's a free version (which limits you to 40 hours of free listening per month) and a couple of inexpensive upgrade options.
• Flycast is a free portable media distributor which has grown from 80 to over 1000 channels since January, 2008. Simply download the Flycast app to your Blackberry, install, and listen. The catch is audio, video, and graphical ads along with your music. FlyCast for BlackBerry works on BlackBerry Bold phones with OS version 4.6, on BlackBerry Curve phones with OS 4.5 (Sprint, Verizon and other CDMA networks) and OS 4.3 (AT&T, T-Mobile and other 3G networks) and BlackBerry Storm phones with OS 4.7.0.67.
• Nutsie by Handmark lets you listen to any iTunes playlist - yours, friends, anyone's. Explore new musical tastes by sampling what other people have put together. Handmark says "it's like having an iPod built right into your BlackBerry... only better." A one-time fee of $19.95 gives you unlimited access to millions of iTunes playlists for the life of your Blackberry device.
• Blackberry Media Sync, a free app from RIM, lets you sync iTunes or MP3s from your PC to your Blackberry. You can choose songs, playlists, or a random mix of tunes.

RIM plans an online music store akin to iTunes. 7Digital, scheduled to be launched in September, 2009, will let Blackberry owners download millions of licensed MP3s without the hassles of DRM (Digital Rights Management) schemes that prevent copying to PC or other devices. 7Digital seems smart in previews; for example, in cell coverage it downloads low-quality, smaller MP3 files and then upgrades them to larger hi-fi files when you move into WiFi coverage.

There are other online radio and music services you can use with your Blackberry. Do you have a favorite, or a comment about one of the above? Post your thoughts below...