Anyone who has followed my blogging knows I'm a big proponent of the subscription model for listening to digital music. (See
iTunes is dead) It's perhaps the 2nd most impactful (after DVR) example of technology altering my lifestyle.
There's a lot of coverage today on MTV's entry into this market with their Urge offering. Like Rhapsody, Napster, and Yahoo Music, users of Urge can pay a flat monthly fee ($9.95 for just streaming / $14.95 for streaming and downloading to PCs and MP3 players) for virtually unlimited music.
Two things make this news especially compelling. First MTV, despite the fact that there's no music on the main network itself anymore, is still a tremendous music brand, perhaps the strongest if you consider the ability to promote the product. Apple with it's iTunes and iPod and iBono are certainly in the arena but they need to pay for those hip commercials. Perhaps some would consider MySpace a good music brand. Maybe if you're 20 years old and like hunting for independent stuff. If somebody can think of a better music brand and outlet for virtually free promotion (I have something like 8 or 9 MTV or VH1 channels on my cable system) please reply.
Second, as opposed to coming out with a proprietary music player as Yahoo, Rhapsody, and Napster have, MTV's Urge will work natively with Windows Media Player 11. You can play and manage music you download from the other subscription services with WMP, but you can't browse, stream and download from WMP. With Urge you can. This means more promotion for the service when you think about all those PCs pre-installed with Windows Media Player.
Some may cringe with some stale "Microsoft is evil" sentiment. Before you do, please keep in mind that you can only play songs you buy on iTunes on iPods, not other MP3 players, nor will songs you buy on other services work on iPods. That's more iRestrictive than anything Microsoft is doing, in the digital music realm at least.
I'll definitely check out Urge as my $5/month Yahoo subscription runs out in a couple of months and I'm not re-upping with them. If nothing else, hopefully Urge, MTV, and Microsoft will bring more awareness to what is a vastly superior way to pay for music.
CNET/New York Times article
