Zune Thoughts: Zune Marketplace Not Impacted by URGE Merged with Rhapsody

Remember this story last week about URGE merging with Rhapsody? I was a bit nervous about what the impact was going to be on the Zune Marketplace, because I always thought that the Zune Marketplace was just a skin over the URGE library - the fact that they look and function the same isn't a coincidence. The day this happened, I reached out immediately to my main contact on the Zune team, Cesar Menendez, and my Zune PR contact at Edelman, Lane Keough. I asked each of them for a quote on what impact this move by URGE was going to have on the Zune Marketplace. And I waited. I sent a follow-up email a few days later...and waited some more.

At this point I was starting to get worried - usually the only reason PR people don't email you back is because they're busy trying to figure out what they should say ("the message"). I never did hear from Lane, but it seems my pal Cesar was off getting married and whatnot so I guess he's excused.

And what did he have to say about this issue? “This doesn’t actually have an effect on the content available in Zune Marketplace, but for details on MTV’s plans, you should contact them.”

And that's that - it seems that while the Zune Marketplace may have been based off the URGE code at some point, they must have all their own music partnerships in place and a completely separate back-end. Back to business as usual people...