Thumbplay News

Premier, Cloud-Based Music Service is the First-of- its-Kind

on Both Android^TM and BlackBerry^® Smartphones

NEW YORK – 3 MAY 2010 – Thumbplay^®, the leading provider of mobile entertainment in the U.S., has launched its cloud-based Thumbplay® Music™ (www.thumbplaymusic.com) service in Android^TM Market, providing the Android fan-base with unlimited, anytime/anywhere access to millions of songs. Thumbplay Music is the only on-demand, subscription music service currently available on both the fastest-growing and largest smartphone platforms in the U.S., Android and BlackBerry^® smartphones,* respectively. (Complete list of devices below.) The service is also available as a companion app on PCs/Macs^® and it is coming soon on iPhone^®.

Thumbplay Music has more than eight million tracks under license from all major labels and more than 25,000 independent labels. Thumbplay Music is a next generation music service, built by experts in mobile content delivery to serve the rapidly growing market of U.S. smartphone users which is forecasted to grow to 160 million people by 2013.**

Said Evan Schwartz, CEO and Co-Founder of Thumbplay, “With Thumbplay Music now live on Android and BlackBerry smartphones, we’re giving tens of millions of people truly portable, anytime, anywhere access to all the music they want. We’ve been getting rave reviews from our Android users in Beta, especially when they employ the companion app on PC and see the power of having their complete music collections and playlists in-sync. We’re thrilled to deliver a music service worthy of discerning Android fans.”

Thumbplay Music includes its own in-app media player and boasts several compelling features, including:

• Unlimited, on-demand access to any artist or album; millions of songs to choose from
• Build a personal music collection with Favorites and effortless Playlist creation; auto-sync between smartphone and PC/Mac
• Online and offline access: No connection? No problem! Listen to music on the subway or in-flight. Available anytime, anywhere. (Offline access currently only available on BlackBerry devices; coming soon for Android.)
• Playlist Genie for music discovery: Instantly generate customized recommendations from favorite songs
• Search: Find music by artist, song, album or genre; includes free previews of all songs
• Import existing iTunes^® playlists within Thumbplay Music’s companion desktop app. With a few clicks, recreate iTunes playlists and have them available on smartphone and PC/Mac.
• Free, “no strings attached” three-day trial; subscriptions are then available for $9.99/month.

Thumbplay, which enjoys sustained profitability, has built an award-winning service centered on delivering millions of pieces of mobile content to 95 percent of U.S. devices among every major carrier. Thumbplay is leveraging its existing network of more than 8,000 distribution partners to promote Thumbplay Music.

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ABOUT THUMBPLAY

Thumbplay, Inc. is defining the mobile entertainment experience for U.S. consumers. Thumbplay.com features licensed music, video and games from some of the world’s largest entertainment companies, including: EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, as well as several independent labels and artists and video game companies. Headquartered in New York City, Thumbplay was founded in September 2004 by Are Traasdahl and Evan Schwartz. Investors include Bain Capital Ventures, SoftBank Capital, i-Hatch Ventures, Redwood Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Meritech, Brookside Capital Partners and Cross Creek Capital. More information can be found at www.thumbplay.com or at m.thumbplay.com from a mobile phone.

*According to comScore (April 2010), RIM is the leading mobile smartphone platform in the U.S. and Google’s Android platform is the fastest-growing.

Thumbplay Music is available on the following smartphones using the Android™ mobile technology platform with an Operating System of 1.6 or higher: (Motorola™) Droid™, Nexus One™, HTC® G1™ and the HTC® myTouch™ 3G.

Thumbplay Music is currently available on the following BlackBerry® smartphones: BlackBerry^® Bold 9000, BlackBerry^® Bold™ 9700, BlackBerry^® Curve™ 8520, BlackBerry^® Curve™ 8530, BlackBerry^® Curve™ 8900, BlackBerry^® Tour™ 9630, BlackBerry^® Storm™ 9530 and the BlackBerry^® Storm™ 2 9550.

**Yankee Group (2009)

All trademarks property of their respective owners. No partnerships implied. The BlackBerry and RIM families of related marks, images and symbols are the exclusive properties and trademarks of Research In Motion Limited.

Labels: press, press-release

posted by BusTed Love at 8:14 AM