Posts Tagged ‘music’

Thumbplay — preview & download music on the BlackBerry

Friday, September 25th, 2009

I haven’t really explored the musical possibilities of my BlackBerry much lately…mostly because I didn’t think it really had any.

But then I discovered a pretty cool new free app in the BlackBerry App World site — Thumbplay — and decided to give it a try. So far, I’m pretty impressed.

Thumbplay advertises “…a great selection of DRM-free songs for your Blackberry Smartphone….browse, preview and download music from thousands of artists, and then play your music from your phone, computer or any MP3 player.” Kind of like iTunes for the rest of us, I suppose.

When I downloaded the app, it came across pretty quickly; at under half a megabyte, it’s a pretty slender program. (That impressed me — I positively hate bloatware.)

Within a couple minutes I had it installed and was previewing some tunes. The selection is pretty good but not great — it doesn’t seem to have every tune under the sun, but most of my favorite artists seem pretty well represented.

You can preview any of the tracks in the store, and they come across pretty quickly. Buying a full song cost me 99 cents, and the transaction happened quickly and seamlessly. (The first time through I had to enter my credit card information, but the next couple purchases didn’t require this.)

They promise a new free track every week, so we’ll see what’s offered. And now that I have these DRM-free MP3 tracks on my phone, I’ll send ‘em over to my laptop via bluetooth and maybe burn them to a CD for the car. I’m not fully sold on this app yet — but initial signs are pretty promising.

You can find more info on Thumbplay here on the BlackBerry App World site. If you try it out, post a comment below to let us know how it goes!

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Blackberry Media Sync – another way to free yourself from AT&T and the iPhone

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

Recently, I learned I could sync my Blackberry Curve with iTunes® or Windows Media Player files. I thought, awesome, I can finally consolidate the different gadgets I carry around everyday onto a single device.

But I wondered how hard it would be and/or would it be as easy as syncing with other dedicated music-playing devices? The answer in short is, yes, it is easy and quick. Here’s my step by step account:

  1. Go to Blackberry’s website, download application and install on your computer. Click here to download yourself.
  2. Launch application from your computer, at which point you’ll be asked to connect phone via USB.
  3. Choose whether to sync with an iTunes library or a Windows Media Player library. I chose my iTunes library. (There’s an easy way to switch this at any time from the ‘options’ menu).
  4. The desktop application then provided a list of playlists, including the the entire library of songs to choose from. I chose the ‘Top 25 most played’ to keep it simple.
  5. After selecting a playlist to transfer, the app indicated how much space on my Blackberry media card still remained and it had a cool option that allowed me to “add random music to free space” if I wanted to fill up my entire media card with additional songs. I left this option unchecked as I wanted to leave some room for pictures on my media card.
  6. Finally, just click ‘Sync’ and, voila, iTunes music on my Curve. It works fairly seamlessly with one exception. Songs I purchased from the iTunes store before they offered DRM-free versions (Digital Rights Managed) weren’t able to be transfered. So alas, for me, no Beastie Boy’s Paul’s Boutique on my phone for now.

And that was it. As simple as could be, without a single hiccup along the way. The whole process from installing to syncing took less than 20 minutes.

So now that you can sync music, enjoy superior email functionality, use maps with GPS and download 100’s of other cool apps from the Blackberry App World you can finally free yourself from AT&T and the iPhone.  Need more convincing? Click here for a complete guide to “knowing your network.”

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TuneWiki for BlackBerry Curve Smartphone

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

The media player that comes default on the BlackBerry Curve is great but for those people looking for a little extra something from their music player, check out TuneWiki.

  • Load up your tunes onto a memory card and it will auto scan the memory to see what new songs you’ve loaded.
  • It has a feature that lets you see what songs other people are listening to around your location at any given time.
  • It shows lyrics to your song while you’re listening to it. Though caution that it’s not entirely accurate as the lyrics are based on users contribution to the TuneWiki database.
  • You can search for lyrics by entering in an artist and song title – for when you just can’t remember the words to the second chorus of your favorite song.

Best of all, because you’re using a BlackBerry, you can start your play list, and do other things on your BlackBerry while you’re listening to music – like write a few emails.

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