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."

gg no re

Apple already won this game.

Re:gg no re

Apple already won this game.

Um, I think the millions of users of The Pirate Bay might disagree.

Sometimes, the game goes not to the strongest or the swiftest, but to the one that's free.

Why?

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?

Re:Why?

Are there any examples of Microsoft ever participating in a mutually beneficial relationship with another company?

That's like asking if anyone has ever entered a mutually beneficial relationship with Count Dracula.

Re:Why?

That's like asking if anyone has ever entered a mutually beneficial relationship with Count Dracula.

I resent that comparison!

Count Dracula *STOPS* sucking blood when he has had his fill!

Because they are businessmen

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.

Re:Why?

Ironically enough, the one instance I can think of is Apple.

MS's $500 million investment probably saved the company from bankruptcy. This was at the low point of Apple's market share, reputation and stock price. MS propped them up because they knew Apple customers were potential MS customers too, even if they didn't use their OS.

$500 million? Saved Apple from bankruptcy? Microsoft invested $150 million in non voting shares and Apple had over $6 billion in cash in the bank at the time. They were nowhere near going bankrupt. Also Apple customers aren't "potential" MS customers, MS is the largest supplier of Mac software after Apple. What saved Apple was the return of Steve Jobs and his focusing the company on profitable products like the rollout of the iMac.

Also, except for Office 6 when MS tried to use the same code base for Mac and Windows versions, the Mac version, starting with it's debut for Mac before any PC version existed, has often been thought of as better. Partly due to MS' use of the smaller Mac market to test new features that if well received become part of the Windows version, but also due greatly to the developers in the Mac Business Unit at Microsoft which are true Mac users.

What makes MTV think....

....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.

No tears shed here

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....

Re:No tears shed here

"URGE" always seemed to me to be one of the ugliest, dumbest-sounding names

Look on the bright side, they could have called it "Surge", think what a PR disaster that would have been.

MTV...Music....

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.

Because someone will ask..

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.

Rhapsody?

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.

Yet another victim...

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.

Re:Yet another victim...

The whole Urge thing lacked the strategic finesse and vision Microsoft would otherwise be capable of.

Yeah, who would have thought that the company that made Microsoft Bob and Windows ME could ever partner in something so lame.

Will we finally get 64-bit Vista compatability?

I've used Rhapsody for years, but it's been really annoying that their DRM software doesn't support 64-bit Vista.

Convergence of 3 Irrelevant Dinosaurs

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*

...all but dead...

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!

Re:...all but dead...

'all but xxx' is an American (or perhaps more generally English) idiom that means 'about as close to xxx as you can get without actually being there yet.'.
On the the other hand, the phrase 'anything but xxx' means the speaker doesn't think the thing is anywhere near 'xxx' even if other people do.
Hope this helps.

Proprietary Vendor Lockin

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?

This is not a troll!

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.

Re:This is not a troll!

My sister-in-law just graduated high school. She was a cheer leader, got poor grades, and seemed to be constantly bitching about one or another of the girls in her grade. So I assume she is pretty much the target audience for "teen fashion" crap. She LOVES those MTV "reality" drama shows. I seldom ever talk to her much beyond "Hi" and "Pass the salt", but I do overhear her conversations with my wife. It actually took me some time to be able to distinguish between her stories of petty drama that involved her and her peers and the stupid stories of petty drama that she was regurgitating from these shows. It still takes me some time to catch on that this story is real after she changes boyfriends; I tend to assume the new name is a new show, or new character (which also happens a lot, from what I gather).

So, to answer your question, I have no idea. But from what I can tell, MTV counts for at least as much in my sister-in-law's life as her actual life. Seriously. I've seen her crying over breaking up with her boyfriend, and she was less sad than the time she was crying over what turned out to be a break-up in a show.

Microsoft != Hip With The Youngsters

Personally, being in my mid 40s, I waved goodbye to the "Fashion Bus" over a decade ago and really couldn't give a toss about brand names - plus I've got this far through life without owning an Apple product to probably never owning one.

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.

Mac vs. PC

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.

I think they've got the characterizations completely wrong. The Mac Guy should be some infeminite clothing designer type who grabs his crotch a lot and brags about the size of his penis, while PC Guy should be a fiery, butchy lesbian dominatrix who chases Mac Guy around demanding "Slow down, girly-boy, I want to insert Office 2008 into ya!"

From Wikipedia

From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urge)

Urge may refer to:
        * urge, a strong desire
                    o Sucking urge

Har har

They say opposites attract.

The negation is true as well!

Corporate insanity

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.

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 .com innovation today.

Awesome!

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.

MTV and music?

Yeah maybe 15 years ago when they still played videos.

Memo to MSFT: avoid the consumer market. You suck.

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").

RealNetworks? Are you F#&@$ing kidding me?

MTV is teaming up with RealNetworks? Why would they team up with the one streaming video standard that is hated by EVERYONE? Viacom's board must have nobody on it that even has a the slightest clue about the Internet.

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.

Query

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.

partner with MSFT, help them build presence, lose

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

This makes me confident

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?

Bad pattern of behavior...

Apple: iTunes? Still there. Microsoft: MSN Music? Bail. Urge? Bail. PlaysForSure? Bail. Zune? Gotta wonder...

How about iRiver's Clix?

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.