With Urge, MTV and Microsoft launch an iTunes alternative
If you’ve got the urge to splurge on digital music and aren’t one of the 50 million people who’ve purchased an iPod, MTV wants you.
This week, the cable entertainment giant launched its long-in-the-works download service Urge with partner Microsoft. And given its appealing visuals and simple interface, it could give Apple and its iTunes music store a run for the money — if music fans are willing to forgo their iPods. That’s a big if. Urge, like online services Napster and Rhapsody, is not fully compatible with Apple’s wildly popular iPod, though it is with 100 other portable music players, according to MTV.
I test-drove Urge this week and found it extremely user-friendly. It also possesses some features that could engage true music fans.
(A few technical notes: You’ll need a broadband Internet connection, Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or higher, and Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or above. Installing Urge x will also install Windows Media Player 11 and Flash Player Version 8. Sorry Mac users, Urge won’t work for you.)
After signing off on the standard licensing agreement and starting up an account, I downloaded and burned ‘‘Broken Boy Soldiers,’’ the new album by the Raconteurs, in a zippy six minutes. The trial is free for the first 14 days, but if you want to burn you’ve got to pay: 99 cents for a single song and $9.90 on average for a full album — just like on iTunes.
Urge has many of the same features as iTunes, including celebrity playlists (from rapper Snoop Dogg to comic Sarah Silverman), podcasts, and album charts, but also has a few bells and whistles that make it a fun place just to poke around.
For starters, the visuals on the home page and elsewhere are bright but not overwhelming. The search function brings up album thumbnails, tons of album info, and biographical details from All Music Guide.
Unlike iTunes users, Urge subscribers browsing through the virtual racks are able to listen to the full song before they download it (there are a few exceptions). Nonsubscribers get the same 30-second clip they would on iTunes. This gives people the time to decide if they really want to keep ‘‘Mambo No. 5’’ on their hard drives or just bop to it while they look around.
In addition, artists who don’t make music available on any service — such as the Beatles and Garth Brooks — have extensive bios and complete discographies on Urge. This is an improvement over iTunes, which ignores artists who don’t permit their music to be downloaded.
‘‘A lot of what a fan loves about music is beyond the songs,’’ says Jason Hirschhorn, chief digital officer for MTV Networks. ‘‘They want to know about the history, they want to know who influenced that band.Urge also allows users to stream videos — stuff like exclusive live performances from MTV, VH1, and CMT.
For now, MTV is offering free trials at www.Urge.com. Those who sign up have three options. For $14.95 a month, ‘‘Urge All Access to Go’’ gives subscribers the ability to play, download, and burn an unlimited number of songs from the 2 million-plus catalog and to transfer music to a portable player. It also allows access to 500 playlists — broken up by genre, charts, celebrities, or years, — as well as to MTV shows like ‘‘TRL.’’ Other features include 130 radio stations, artist features, interviews, and expert blogs. For $9.95 a month, users get all of the above but can’t transfer their downloads to a portable player. Users can also simply pay per song and album as they would on iTunes without paying a monthly fee.
Will iPod/iTunes devotees be able to resist Urge? Probably, but for now MTV isn’t worried.
‘‘Urge is not going to turn people off of iTunes,’’ says Hirschhorn, who says he loves his iPod. ‘‘People who like iTunes and that ecosystem are going to stay there. But there’s a music market out there of which only 5 percent is digital. So rather than concentrating on taking market share away from the 5 percent, I’m concentrating on the 95 percent that aren’t using it yet.’’ 