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Discover New Music

  • Zooropa

    • 10 out of 10
    • U2
    • This record is perhaps U2's finest hour, yet it has been forgotten as a strange by-product of the ZooTV tour's overload, and is generally regarded by most fans as a poor effort. It is this sentiment t
  • Suspended Animation

    • 8 out of 10
    • Fantomas
    • Mike Patton may well be one of the hardest working men in showbiz these days, and his latest with Fantômas underscores just about how far out he is willing to travel.

      Suspended Animation

  • Trouble

    • 8 out of 10
    • Ray LaMontagne
    • At first, Ray LaMontagne might strike you as just another breathy-voiced knockoff of folk/rock guitarists like John Mayer and Jack Johnson. But he's actually got a better voice than either, he tell

  • Physical Graffiti

    • 10 out of 10
    • Led Zeppelin
    • This album bears every flavor of genius from the five records that came before. It is, I believe, the band's finest. With Physical Graffiti, Zep came raging back to their musical home territory -- har
  • Never Let Me Down [ECD]

    • 4 out of 10
    • David Bowie
    • It must be a lonely place to be considered David Bowie's worst album by just about everyone, including the artist himself. As the last album before Bowie "rebooted" and formed the band Tin Machine, "N

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News

MTV to Launch URGE Music Service [Updated]

After a prolonged wait, MTV is finally ready to launch its online music service, Urge, as a public beta on Wednesday. The service is designed to compete with the iTunes Music Store (iTMS), and will offer some exclusive MTV content in its 2 million available tracks. According to the New York Times, Urge is a subscription-based service, like Napster and RealNetworks, and also a purchase and download service like the iTMS.

URGE has the brand familiarity of MTV, but it does it does not offer Macintosh or iPod support - limitations that are problems for other iTMS competitors. It also relies on the latest version of Windows Media Player from Microsoft, firmly solidifying its position as a non-Apple compatible service.

Listening to music on a Windows-based PC will cost US$9.95 a month. To download music to a portable MP3 player as well, you'll pay $14.95 a month. Songs can be purchased and downloaded for $0.99 each.

Urge will offer 500 preset music playlists, 130 Internet radio stations, and streaming videos. MTV plans to add video purchases later.

In an interview with Playlist, MTV confirmed that the Urge service, along with its reliance on Microsoft's DRM technology, won't change its relationship with Apple. MTV's Chief Digital Officer, Jason Hirschhorn, commented "We are a pure content company. We will still work with iTunes and Apple, but we are really proud of what we have accomplished with Microsoft."

Analysts see Urge as a potential treat to Apple's iTMS, but MTV sees it as a complementary service. Mr. Hirschhorn's responded to analysts comments with "It's not about trying to get people away from iTunes, for us it's about talking to the 95 percent of people that aren't buying online music yet."

[This story has been updated with additional information about Urge.]

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