Thumbplay Music Joins Google I/O 2010's Developer Sandbox

NEW YORK, May 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Thumbplay®, the leading provider of mobile entertainment in the U.S., announced today that it has been selected to demo its cloud-based Thumbplay® Music™ (www.thumbplaymusic.com) service at the 2010 Google™ I/O Conference, being held May 19-20 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.  The company will reveal an early release of the Thumbplay Music app running on Google Chrome™, which also supports Google's Chrome operating system and utilizes HTML5 and CSS3. Thumbplay is one of 10 third-party apps to be showcased in the Chrome Pod of the Google I/O Developer Sandbox.

Thumbplay Music is an 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 currently available as a companion app on PCs/Macs® and 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.  

"To be invited to the Developer Sandbox at Google I/O this year is a credit to our ongoing relationship with Google," said Evan Schwartz, CEO and Co-Founder of Thumbplay.  "With Google's innovation, our team was able to create a feature-rich app that works beautifully and leverages the ease and simplicity of a browser."

The Thumbplay Music application for Chrome OS was developed in accordance with the latest HTML5 and CSS3 web standards and will provide future Chrome OS users with unlimited, anytime/anywhere access to millions of songs.  In addition, there will be a series of unique, web-based interactive features specific to Thumbplay Music for Chrome OS, such as offline playback and instant synching.

The Google I/O Conference is Google's largest annual developer event, hosting thousands of leading developers and designers who have created and cultivated applications specific to Google and open web technology.  The Developer Sandbox, introduced at the 2009 Google I/O Conference, serves as a select venue for developers to exchange detailed information regarding their services while presenting them to those in attendance at Google I/O.  Developers and partners interested in meeting with Thumbplay during Google I/O can request a demo time here: http://developer.thumbplay.com.

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 mobile entertainment content to 95 percent of U.S. devices on every major carrier. Thumbplay will leverage its existing network of more than 8,000 distribution partners to promote Thumbplay Music.

ABOUT THUMBPLAY

Thumbplay, Inc. is the leading mobile entertainment provider in the U.S.  Thumbplay Music, the company's cloud-based, streaming music service for smartphones and PCs/Macs, was launched in January 2010 with more than 8 million songs under license. 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. 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

SOURCE Thumbplay, Inc.