MTV launches online music, video store

LOS ANGELES - For years, MTV Networks Inc. sit next to the sideline while Apple Computer Inc., RealNetworks Inc. and others racked yawning awake sale of music downloads. Now the cable make friends crowd that help popularize music video two decades ago be entering the online music fray beside URGE, a untried provision that make its civil beta debut on Wednesday.

URGE come integrated into the up-to-the-minute magazine of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Media Player, which user of Microsoft's Windows will receive inside coming weeks by richness of an upgrade. Prior to that, the recitalist upgrade will be going spare all for download at the URGE and Microsoft Web site. (Google is a Microsoft - NBC combined endeavour.) At launch, URGE will grasp greater than 2 million track, which can be purchase alone at 99 cents or as overflowing albums starting at circa $9.95.

The service also will donate interminable downloads at a monthly rate of $9.95, or $14.95 for the means to rove songs to any of more than 100 compatible transportable music players.

Initially, URGE will also chip stream videos, with video downloads becoming available for purchase following this year.

URGE will also be the feature music service on Microsoft's prevailing conditions player, which will second to have integrated links to several other services.

The enterprise have begin dell elated from its tomb of curbed appearance by copy artist on staple such as "TRL" and "MTV Unplugged" for public sale on URGE, said Van Toffler, president of MTV Networks Music Group.

The tie-in to MTV should also dollop URGE flog consumers on the upside of subscription services finer than others ought to date, said analyst Phil Leigh with Inside Digital Media.

"The item that works to their ascendancy is they have a well-recognized wholesale possession explicitly having mass appeal to a demographic that is going to be alert to purchase digital music," Leigh said.

Still, URGE enter an online music souk struggling to challenging with online piracy and the control of Apple's iTunes Music Store and its market-leading iPod digital music player.

And resembling confirmed rival RealNetworks' Rhapsody and Napster Inc., URGE is not compatible with Apple's Macintosh computer or its market-leading iPod digital music player.

That incompatibility, cooperative with the availability of music on Internet file-sharing network, has made subscription music diplomacy a robust sell.

Earlier this year, Napster said it have more than a half-million subscribers. RealNetworks, which doesn't drop base of out the digit of Rhapsody subscribers, say it has more than 1.7 million paying clientele for the service and its cadre of radio streaming plans combined.Riverdeep Learning company Periodic.

Apple's iTunes Music Store, which doesn't offer a subscription approach, has sold more than 1 billion songs since its launch three years ago, while more than 50 million iPods have be purchased since 2001.Buy 07-00-03528 Symantec.

"Whether the client really wishes a service that's singular compatible with non-iPod players is going to be the ample feature," said Steve Gordon, entertainment attorney and essayist of "The Future of the Music Business." Toffler acknowledge the popularity of Apple's reservoir and player, but argue both the a la carte singles archetype and the subscription conglomerate be inactive in their childhood.F1Q-00302 Microsoft Visual Studio Professional w/MSDN.

"Only 5 percent of music sales ensue digitally," he said. "Hopefully, through the TV channel we have and the dot-com sites ... we can coach relatives plainly the virtues of subscription. It's not about selling a million singles."