While BlackBerry devices have been praised for their functionality, only recently have they begun cracking the "snazzy" barrier. Next month, the venerable communicators will have one more thing in common with iPods.

Downloadable music for the Research in Motion BlackBerry device was announced today from Canadian online music provider Puretracks, to be available next month at the CTIQ Wireless show.

The announcement was made and the service was demonstrated at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin.

While Puretrack's existing service uses the Microsoft DRM, service for the BlackBerry will be DRM-free, the company said, meaning users can move the music to other locations, including burning it onto a CD.

Puretracks already has agreements in place with Universal, Sony BMG, Warner, EMI, and independent music producers, for a total of two million songs. But thus far, only EMI has signed on to provide DRM-free music, said Andrea Ziegler, chief operating officer, though she hopes a second major label will sign on before April 1.

About 200,000 songs are available for the BlackBerry thus far, she said. Songs will be the same price as for the current Puretracks service, which means mostly $.99 each but with a few costing slightly different prices, based on agreements with the publisher, Ziegler said.

The service will work with the BlackBerry Pearl, BlackBerry Curve, and BlackBerry 8800 series phones, allowing the company to more easily compete with other music-enabled phones such as the Apple iPhone and the Rhapsody - both of which use DRM in their music downloads. Instead of MP3, songs are stored and transmitted in AAC/AAC+ format, that the company said takes up half the size of an MP3 file, making it quicker to download over a cellular service.

The application was developed by Magnet Mobile Inc., in Toronto, said Deborah Hall, vice president of sales and marketing. Puretracks said it also intends to develop support for Wi-Fi capable handsets, which would let BlackBerry users download MP3 files.