The 7digital music store has been tight with BlackBerry for a long time now, and they’ve today graduated to preload status thanks to an agreement with RIM to get on the PlayBook tablet. There will be regional limitations based on where 7digital has rights mind you, but it’s still a big win for these guys.
Mobile music stores tend to be kind of samey, but 7digital’s user interface on BlackBerry handsets really stuck out, and having a respectable stable of 13 million 320 kbps tracks certainly helps. 7digital on the BlackBerry PlayBook will include a recommendation engine, which is something of a must-have for any mobile music service these days. Apparently it’s not DevelopIQ who’s working on the PlayBook app, so it may look very different from the Photoshop jobby above.
7digital was also preloaded on the Samsung Galaxy S II, even though Google sided with Amazon for the default Android music store back at the beginning. That being said, there’s no saying that Amazon may just turn around and horn in on the PlayBook given they’ve already got a BlackBerry app. It pains me that Kik never brought their idea for a music store to fruition, but subscription services like Rdio seems to be gaining a lot of steam lately; I wonder how well they compete with the pay-per-track model… Which do you guys prefer? Personally, I tend to go with Grooveshark, since they’re free and fully functional if you don’t want to pay, and the $9/month is really just the icing on the cake with no ads and mobile access.
If you’d like to check out 7digital’s current mobile apps, you can find it in App World or the Android Market. 7digital will be showing off the PlayBook app at SXSW, so we’ll have to be sure to check it out.
[via RIM]