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MTV Bails on Microsoft's URGE Store
Marlowe writes "MTV's once-ballyhooed partnership with Microsoft appears to be all but dead. MTV is teaming up with RealNetworks to form Rhapsody America, with Verizon handling wireless distribution. It's a big blow to Microsoft, too. 'With the creation of Rhapsody America, the writing is on the wall for MTV and Microsoft's Urge music store partnership. Although the Microsoft-MTV marriage was announced with great fanfare, it was likely headed for divorce court right from the start due to Microsoft's plans to turn PlaysForSure into a second-class citizen with the launch of the Zune — and its self-contained music ecosystem.' When asked about the future of Urge, MTV Music Group President Toffler was terse. 'We are in discussions with Microsoft now and will be on Windows Media Player 11 until further notice,' he said. While the Urge brand will ultimately disappear, Toffler said that 'a lot' of Urge's elements will live on in Rhapsody America."
Apple already won this game.
Why would any company want to partner with Microsoft? They seem to drop commitments at a whim (PlaysForSure) and do not seem to ever has their partners interest anywhere in their list of priorities.
Are there any examples of Microsoft ever participating in a mutually beneficial relationship with another company?
....That it can seriously compete with the Apple iTunes store regardless of who they are partnered with? The iTunes ecosystem has too much of a head start to be caught in the short term IMHO.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
This may be somewhat off-topic, but I can't mourn this passing. "URGE" always seemed to me to be one of the ugliest, dumbest-sounding names of all the music download services available. And its front-row presence in WMP11 has always annoyed me to no end.
Plus, who really cares about these services anymore, now that WalMart is offering EMI and Universal MP3s without DRM for cheaper than iTunes, at 256 kbps....
This isn't too surprising, Seriously, can you imagine trying to listen to a BSOD? Is there even a sound for that?
What does MTV have to Do with Music.... Back in the 80s it had a bunch of music videos but now it more kinda of a TV Teen magazine, that sometimes shows a music video. As for a huge loss for Microsoft probably not it might be a minor one. But I think this is the lease of Microsoft Worries. Like those billions of dollars they accidentally paid for to help support Linux.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Lawsuit...patent infringement...sue MTV, I say sue 'em....
Ballmer must be having a wild day at the office.
ballyhoo (bl'-h')
n., pl. -hoos.
Sensational or clamorous advertising or publicity.
Noisy shouting or uproar.
tr.v., -hooed, -hooing, -hoos.
To advertise or publicize by sensational methods.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
I'd almost forgotten Rhapsody even existed anymore with the rise of iTunes. I remember when Real originally rolled out their service, it seems like forever ago. They couldn't make it work, and this was pre-iTunes. I hope for them that they can somehow capture it, the Nth time around.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
MTV must have BIG balls to place them on microsoft - wonder how Balmer enjoys receiving for a change?
Perhaps it's time for Microsoft to bail on Ballmer.
The whole Urge thing lacked the strategic finesse and vision Microsoft would otherwise be capable of.
There's only one strategic foundation that can challenge Apple+iTunes and Urge was not it, and the Rhapsody-MTV-Verizon approach is not it either.
Hope is the currency of fools
I've used Rhapsody for years, but it's been really annoying that their DRM software doesn't support 64-bit Vista.
Let's see....
Real managed to totally blow an overwhelming lead in streaming media as Realplayer was allowed to die on the vine. Add MTV to the mix. They were relevant to the music scene about 20 years ago. Now it's just reality TV plus advertising. And Verizon...a CDMA network with the highest prices in the country and a track record of disabling phone features that cut into their "buy it from us or not at all" corporate culture. Yeah, that ought to be a real powerhouse for peeing away a few hundred million of investment capital.
*yawn*
I'm not an American, so maybe I don't understand the logic of this grammar. But this 'once-ballyhooed partnership with Microsoft appears to be all but dead.'. In other words, the partnership is everything except dead. I know that in logic and implication can't be reversed by definition. But I believe you could also write 'all but dead' as 'nothing but alive' - which would mean that MTV has a healthy partnership with Microsoft. Which makes no sense with the rest of the story. It's so confusing!
Microsoft Windows wont be the number 1 OS forever, just like ITunes wont be the number 1 music store forever.
Something cheaper and better will come out eventually.
Everybody thinks that they will come out ahead by dealing with MS. But MS's game is NOT tech, but marketing and legalize. The absolute best that you can expect is to come out even. Until business ppl realize that you will be screwed by dealing with them, they will continue to take this path. The interesting point on all this, is that if you pay attention, you will find that only a few ex-MS execs. will deal with MS until they are monster size themselves. While they are little or medium size, they avoid contact with MS. Shows that some of the MS execs are not idtios.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
MTV, Verizon, and Real? It's the unholy trinity!
I don't want music in a proprietary streaming format any more than I want a subscription service for my Cheerios.
When will music companies get it? They have to compete with *free* mp3's that can be played anywhere, anytime, on a myriad of devices. Why would I pay a lot for "branded" streaming music that locks me into Verizon's craptastic service and force-feeds me what the MTV marketing nazguls think I should listen to?
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
I'm not a big fan of TV and I'm not much into today's pop music so I must ask...
Does MTV count for much of anything anymore? I know when I was in high school they had a lot of pull but the last I had seen of them was that they seemed to be like a fish in it's death throws on dry land. They tried to release a few films that saw little or no profit, their music empire was reduced to 10 music videos a day and the rest of their shows were a couple of really really bad "reality" shows that were as predictable as most pre-teen dramas on Nickelodeon.
I'm just wondering if they ever got their shit together or if the modern pop scene is so bad that this passes as a "music" channel and people are forced to stew in their own misery and filth or defect to VH1 with all the Glenn Fry, Enya and Stevie Nicks videos one can tolerate.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Despite all of that, the recent advertising campaign of "Mac vs the PC", where the Mac is a hip young dude and the Windows PC is the stuffy guy in the shirt and tie does have a spark of truth in it.
Look at the cool places where all the kids "hang out" on the Internet these days - iTunes, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace - and nowhere will you see Microsoft mentioned. When all said and done, Microsoft just isn't cool.
Therefore, if Microsoft can partner with something that *IS* hip with the hoopy frood teenagers, like MTV, then it goes some way to kicking off that stuffy old man image Microsoft has with the kids. This breakdown of partnership will therefore hurt Microsoft's image more than it will MTV's.
However, what do I know? Whenever I've mistakenly tuned into MTV they're either playing an Avril Lavigne or Metallica video or talking to one of those nice masked chaps from "Slipknot"...
Maybe one day MTV will have an "Old Duffer's Video Night" when the likes of myself will be treated to videos starring Tucky Buzzard, The Groundhogs, Fuzzy Duck, Jethro Tull or Uriah Heep - in which case give me a shout.
Until then, I'll just be over here polishing the zimmer frame.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
* urge, a strong desire
o Sucking urge
They say opposites attract.
The negation is true as well!
And next up to ditch Microsoft's incompetent anti-consumer strategies?
BBC!
Yet another sign that today's huge companies are not delivering on any front - customer satisfaction, efficient use of resources, maximizing return to shareholders. Instead of the promised capitalist competition and efficiency, we are seeing economy locked down by companies that survive only based on buying and killing promising startups, bribing senators to pass laws that selectively benefit their business (like draconian patent system) and a "rich white boys" club that doesn't welcome any newcomers.
.com innovation today.
Under no sane market conditions would a company spend billions competing with itself by promoting two incompatible music file formats and device lines. Nobody would inflate device cost by including a WiFi chip if it's not going to be usable effectively. No company threatened by competition would introduce a brown device that squirts. We missed a chance to restore some sanity to software industry by implementing court imposed break up of Microsoft into OS and Application companies. Otherwise we would see some of the spirit of
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
MTV dropping Urge and partnering with Rhapsody isn't a blow to Microsoft. Rhapsody sells WMA DRM'd music, and uses WMA for all of it's non-DRM music too. Rhapsody and MTV will continue to buy WMA licenses from Microsoft. The music they sell will continue to only be playable on Microsoft powered computers, or by devices which support the Microsoft Plays-For-Sure logo.
As the Ars article points out - MS essentially bailed when they stupidly confused the market even more with Zune.
Now when a music video comes on MTV, it'll be even easier to jump online and download the song that was just played.
That is, if MTV ever showed music videos anymore...
If MTV had 1/2 a clue, they'd convince their corporate masters at Viacom to drop the suit against YouTube, team up with YouTube as their music video section, make sure that every music video on YouTube had a link on it to an MTV online store selling DRM-Free MP'3, and then split the profits with Google. Anything else is just playing catchup with Apple. Using music videos driving music sales was their business model in the 80's, and it can be once again if they move fast enough, and any online music store that doesn't take the iPod into account is doomed to failure before it even launches.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
But mtv still hosts the zune store. and it was based on the
urge codebase.
# host origin.store.zune.net
origin.store.zune.net is an alias for store.orbit.mtvi.com.
store.orbit.mtvi.com has address 206.220.43.198
Yeah maybe 15 years ago when they still played videos.
Insert funny smart-ass comment here.
What makes them think they can compete? How about a totally different approach? Rhapsody works on a subscription model... You pay $10 a month, you never own a thing and it's all you can eat. I know someone who has it and loves it. It's not for everybody but there is money to be made for sure.
What is this Zune you speak of?
I found one!
The whole Urge debacle is a product of a marketing effort that was in a desperate hurry to play catch-up. It was doomed from the start.
On the surface, a partnership with MTV sounds like it would work, but nobody at MS bothered to do any decent market research. Does anyone out there regard MTV as hip and trendy, especially for music? (We are talking about a channel that had "we don't play music" as its tagline until only recently.)
If MSFT's management team is staying in place, it should diminsh its presence the consumer space or prepare to deal with future disasters like Urge, Zune, and yes, Vista.
These days, they're merely reacting, and cutting corners on the (very) hard work of market research. The brand means next to nothing in the consumer space anyway (unless it's paired with the phrase "compulsory").
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
I can picture it now. A room filled to bursting with fools telling each other how they have to go to their children for anything Internet related and than laugh like it's cute. When are these aging Baby Boomers going to realize that pleeing ignorance of the Internet is like saying you don't know how to use the goddamn telephone.
The WWII generation spent their whole lives looking dumb as hell because they continually thought it was kinda cute that they couldn't figure out a VCR while their kids could and now we have a cluesless bunch of idiot Baby Boomers running the corporations that don't know the reality of something as obvious as RealNetworks' irrelvance. Of course these are the same culturally ignorant fools that freaked the hell out when an AdultSwim cartoon character showed up on a bridge or two in Boston so why should I be in the least bit surprised.
Congratulations you aging hippie bastards. You've become your parents. Dennis Hopper included.
More Trash-o-Vision coming soon to somewhere nobody wants it.
Does that mean that in the interim, we might actually get a REDUCTION in the size of the WMP11 download?! As an admin, that would just be a godsent.
The game.
it has happened over and over and over and over. There is nothing but short term cash to be obtained from a partnership with Microsoft since any real growth from that partnership will result in Microsoft taking the market one way or another. The business clowns who keep telling their investors that a Microsoft deal is a good thing are just fooling them to go along so that they can cash out with the short term profits or they are just ignorant of history.
The Zune-scape Microsoft is attempting to create for itself could be one reason for this fallout but I would venture to guess that what Microsoft is doing with the IPTV idiots they now own is more of a concern. Because if you think Microsoft is not going to be funneling MS Music down to those homes, well, you're not very aware of Microsoft's history. IMO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
It's stuff like this that makes me trust my judgement about these big companies. It sounded like a miserable idea from the start, and I couldn't see how it could possibly, ever, succeed.
My friends think I'm arrogant when I presume to judge big, rich corporations. But then stuff like this happens, and I'm reminded that ultimately, it's one or two guys who make decisions in these companies, and they are mortals just like me.
Now if they really applied the "wisdom of the masses", their own employees, that would be different. But does any big company do this?
expandfairuse.org
do people still use that shit?
Apple: iTunes? Still there. Microsoft: MSN Music? Bail. Urge? Bail. PlaysForSure? Bail. Zune? Gotta wonder...
Using Real? Wow, they want to go down in flames...
Interesting. I wonder how this will affect iRiver's Clix player, that was developed with MS and MTV.
'Course, on the other hand, we told iRiver they were making a mistake by moving away from (more or less) open mp3 and ogg players. Maybe they'll see the light, now...especially with DRM seemingly being abandoned more and more.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
>...a marketing effort that was in a desperate hurry to play catch-up.
;)
Wait, are you talking about Urge or Zune? Never mind...