Research In Motion has announced a new service called BBM Music. It’s a cloud-based service that lets users share their favourite songs with friends via BlackBerry Messenger. The music library already contains millions of songs from leading music companies, including Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI.

Users can add up to 50 songs to their personal profile, with the option of changing half of them each month. Friends’ songs are also added to a user’s music collection, encouraging the growth of the community. It’s possible to create playlists that include tracks from the user’s own profile or from their friends’ collections. Although it’s a cloud-based service, music can be saved to smartphones for offline listening when there’s no wireless coverage.

The technology behind the service is being powered by Omnifone, whose back-end solution is handling content management, music hosting and reporting functions.

Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at Research In Motion, said “More than 45 million customers already love the social communication benefits delivered through BBM and we are thrilled to be extending the experience into a uniquely social and interactive music service. We have partnered with leading music companies to provide a ‘full track’ music sharing and discovery experience that will provide users with quality music on demand and allow them to connect with friends on a whole new level.”

BBM Music isn’t yet available to the public; a closed beta trial is starting today in Canada, the USA and the UK. The service is expected to be commercially available later this year for a monthly subscription of around $4.99 in Australia, Canada, Columbia, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, the United Kingdom and the United States. UK-specific pricing hasn’t been confirmed.

More than 45 million people worldwide currently use BlackBerry Messenger.