Urge: An iTunes Killer?

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With relatively little Public Relations (that I’m aware of) and little or no brand awareness — yet — URGE launched May 2006 and is speculated to be an iTunes Killer.  In their words,

URGE is a digital music service from MTV Networks that makes it easy to enjoy, explore and get the music you want for your PC or portable music player. URGE gives you complete access to over 2 million songs, 18 music genres, countless styles and exclusives from MTV, VH1 and CMT. URGE also gives you hundreds of playlists and radio stations, music feeds, blogs, interviews and feature stories from leading music voices.

Urge is the brainchild of MTV and Microsoft and the relationships hinges around the use of Media Player 11 (WMP 11).

URGE and Windows Media Player 11 work together to develop an immersive and entertaining online music experience. URGE is an online digital music service with loads of great editorial and tools that help you find music you love. Windows Media Player is a media player and library management tool. When you get URGE, you also get Windows Media Player 11. When you get Windows Media Player 11 (or simply update Windows Media Player 10 to 11), you also have the option to get URGE.

Windows Media Player works whether or not you are connected to the Internet. You can play music from your library (including music you’ve downloaded from URGE), rip CDs to your computer’s hard drive, burn new CDs, create playlists, sync your portable music player, etc. URGE kicks in when you are connected to the internet. Simply click on the URGE tab or icon in the left menu, and you are in URGE. Once in URGE, you can play, download or purchase tracks from the URGE catalog, and take advantage of all of URGE’s editorial and blogs, playlists, Auto-Mixes and other features.

The service offers songs priced at US $0.99 or from US $9.95 for an album.  There is also a subscription version available.

For Microsoft, I think this is a good move on their part to begin taking market share from Apple; I’m doubtful of that, but partnering with MTV was a great idea.  MTV is a well-known brand, with great relationships in the music business, and Media Player as the platform in conjunction with the vast MTV catalog sound like a good partnership.

What is puzzling to me, though, is this: The MTV demographic most likely already have iPods and have fidelity to iTunes — in this market space, URGE and MTV and Microsoft entered the game too late.  I don’t watch any MTV properties or use Media Player much.  But, I’ve had an iPod Nano for a while and have been using iTunes since 2002 when I was developing on a G5 in the OS X Jaguar environment.  This story is about time-to-market for sure.

Here are some closing remarks from Jupiter Research:

So overall, how does WMP 11/URGE combo stack up against the iPod/iTunes? Well, if you’re looking at it from the music store perspective, it’s hard to see how this combination bests Apple in any way. While Microsoft talks about the value of the platform, most consumers are too busy listening to their iPods to listen to the message. In terms of a music subscription services, URGE shines. The onboard catalog of music, combined with great editorial content and new innovations like music feeds make this service really stand out from the pack. Add in a good portable device and you start to see how the market can potentially shift over time to a new model. Right now, a lot will come down to marketing. Microsoft still lacks a spokesperson who can deliver the message across and while URGE and WMP 11 are tightly integrated, there’s still not a great story being told about device integration and branding. It may not be enough to remove Apple from king of the digital music world but it very well has the chance to expose the market to the benefits of subscription services and that in and of itself is a pretty big thing. But don’t take my word, download the app on Wed and take a spin for yourself for two weeks.

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