The artist Riz made a video called “PING!!! Me Baby” using just a BBM screen and the song, whether you like it or not, is guaranteed to get stuck in your head. Along with the video release is a contest that Riz is hosting on his site where you can win a BlackBerry Bold. In order to get your free MP3 download of the song and chance to win the Bold, watch the new video for “PING!!! Me Baby” and answer three questions correctly. All the answers will be found in the video itself.
Slacker was at Pepcom 2010 demonstrating an upcoming update to the app/platform that is rolling out in October. The newest features to the app include On-Demand service, deeper search for artists, albums and genres, better integration with the Torch and BlackBerry 6 and more options for building and managing your stations/playlists.
Slacker has grown to a behemoth database of music that caters to a wide range of tastes. I like to test the app with obscure bands and remixes and as time progresses the database gets easier to search. For example, you used to not be able to find Chromeo remixes in Slacker, but now there’s a DJ whose job it is to hunt down these tracks and put them up. One such guy on the Slacker team is @partyben. Check him out in the Slacker forums. If you don’t like his stuff, you can always browse the forums, find admins who share similar music tastes, and maybe they’re on Twitter sharing their updates.
If RIM bought Viigo for its RSS and feed aggregation, what about RIM buying Slacker to compete in the music space? They are after all on a buying streak. More screenshots after the break.
We’ll have a deeper look at these features with a walkthrough coming soon.
Spinfuse is a free loop based music sequencer, beat maker, and ringtone creator app for BlackBerry that has recently gone out as a public beta. The app is accompanied by a website that will let users exchange sounds and discuss their Spinfuse projects. Users will be able to upload and download completed songs, loops, and ringtones made with Spinfuse and rate each other’s work directly from within the Spinfuse application. The current beta release doesn’t have the website functionality but it’s cool to see the direction they’re going in.
Rdio has announced a new social music service along with a BlackBerry app. For $9.99 per month, users can access seven million songs and listen as much as they’d like. The BlackBerry app lets you manage your entire collection, and lets sync as many songs as your phone will allow. The songs are downloaded to your device and therefore you can listen even when you’re not connected.
Research in Motion just released the first self-aware BlackBerry smartphone (AI phone). It’s an incredible move in the smartphone industry that nobody saw coming.
While the public waited fearfully, thinking the first artificially intelligent smartphone would recognize the value in enslaving humanity, it instead chose the route of launching a music store. You can now purchase MP3s directly from your BlackBerry. Resistance is futile.
Slacker fans rejoice, Slacker 3.0 is now available for download! The biggest change is that you can now cache your stations wirelessly while you sleep for a fresh brew of music to go with your morning coffee. It’s available for download now via your BlackBerry browser at http://www.slacker.com or App World. Per Slacker, here are some of the new features in version 3.0:
• Updated interface
• Faster application startup time
• Significantly smaller application size
• Improved touch interface for BlackBerry Storm
• Greatly improved battery life
• New settings menu options
• Tabbed info view for lyrics, reviews and biographies
