TuneWiki gave us a peak at their brand new Beta application for BlackBerry devices.   Who is TuneWiki?  Well, they are a music/media/mobile application development team that won top prize at the AT&T Fast-Pitch Mobile Developer Contest held during this year’s CTIA in Las Vegas.  OK, so What is TuneWiki?

TuneWiki is a social media player application that offers song lyrics synchronized to the music playing on select music-enabled mobile devices in real time  (they previously released versions for the iPhone/iPod Touch and Android devices).  Besides having the largest database library of licensed music lyrics, TuneWiki also utilizes Blip Technology (introduced with the Android version of the application) that can be used to post what song a user is currently playing to their Facebook or Twitter accounts.  The media player also utilizes Location Based Services (LBS) on your mobile device to show you a map of other TuneWiki users near your location — as well as  the playlists of those users.

So, how does the BlackBerry version stack up?

Long story short: BlackBerry users are going to love TuneWiki.

Seriously.  Forget the standard Roxio media player on your BlackBerry, because once this application is out of Beta, and available (expect  it to be officially released later this summer) you will use it to play all of the music on your BlackBerry.  Once I downloaded the application to my Bold, I fired it up and let TuneWiki scan my device’s microSD card to access my music/MP3 files.

This brings me to my one and only nitpic criticism:  Every Time I opened TuneWiki, the application scanned my music files. Now, this is a very pre-release Beta version, so my hope is that this one item will be resolved before the application goes  public.  That said, it took very little time as TuneWiki flies through your Non-DRM music files lightning fast…but, still, it’s a needless extra step after the initial scan completes the first time you use the application.

The user interface looks great.   The media player has all the expected features — like accessing your music collection via Playlists you have created, Albums, specific Artists, and the ability to Shuffle through your music.

Once you play a song, TuneWiki pulls the album art and accesses their extensive library of lyrics.  As you can see in the screen captures below, the Beta version is also Ad Supported.  The Ads are non-obtrusive text links at the bottom of the screen (like the Android and iPhone version, we expect the Free Version of the app to be Ad Supported and a premium/paid version with no advertisements to be offered further down the line).

No matter what song I threw at TuneWiki, the lyrics were delivered to my device in sync with the music.  Now, I’ve never been to a karaoke — and I honestly have no intention of going to a karaoke bar now — but this application is completely addictive.   Tired of friends singing the incorrect lyrics to a song? Pull out your BlackBerry and fire up TuneWiki.   Just want to know what the heck that band is singing?  Go to TuneWiki.    You could waste a lot of time just viewing the lyrics to all of those songs scroll across your BlackBerry screen.

The snapshot below shows a map from TuneWiki’s website indicating other TuneWiki users in the area.  The player on the BlackBerry lets you access “Music Near You” via a link in the player’s Community option, but does not utilize GoogleMaps or BlackBerry Maps at this time to show you other users in the area from your device.   Nor does the BlackBerry version currently link up to Facebook or Twitter, to give you the ability to share what song you’re playing from TuneWiki.

Again, to be fair this is the beta version, and those features may be included in an upcoming release.  I knew going in that those features would not be on this particular release of the BlackBerry application, and honestly did not miss not having them.  I’m not to sure any of my Facebook or Twitter “friends” would care all that much to know what I may be listening to at a given time — but I appreciate how this feature differentiates TuneWiki from other mobile device music players.

If the beta is any indication, BlackBerry users will soon have a very popular — and very functional — media application.