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All posts tagged "URGE"


Sunday, August 17, 2008

The Online Music Ripoff

Posted by Adam Krebs in "Digital Home Talk" @ 02:00 AM

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/218...poff/page1.html

"Why is DRM so contentious? Surely it's designed to protect the rights of artists and record companies in a climate where, as one international music industry body claims, illegal downloads swamp legitimate music store downloads by a ratio of 20 to 1? The problem is DRM doesn't affect the pirates, who upload and download DRM-free files often ripped directly from CD. Instead, it affects legitimate buyers in a range of deeply irritating ways. The first roadblock comes down to Gates' talk of "simplicity" and "interoperability", or rather the lack of both"

I think most people who know anything about DRM hate it. They hate dealing with the limitations of the technology, both intentionally built-in or as a direct result of poor technical planning/implementation. Unlike a good protection scheme which is invisible to the end user, DRM is too limiting to the average customer, and does nothing to stop hardcore music pirates. Plus, when a store goes down and its licenses stop renewing, the customer is the real loser. Sure you can burn your songs to a CD and re-rip them (or do it virtually), but the process is time-consuming and you lose audio fidelity. Another option is to free your purchased music using tools like FairUse4WM (above) or Hymn, or just buy DRM-free in the first place. Check out the article if you need yet another reason to hate DRM.


Tuesday, August 21, 2007

MTV Closing URGE, Merging with Rhapsody

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Zune Talk" @ 10:36 AM

http://www.forbes.com/special_contributors/2007/08/20/mtv-music-urge-tech-cx_pco_0820paidcontent.html

"The news was supposed to be announced at a press conference tomorrow at 11 AM in NYC, but WSJ jumped the gun on it (to be fair, no one cared about getting journalists under embargo). MTV Networks is closing its poorly received online music service Urge, and is merging it with RealNetworks Rhapsody music service."



This is...a bomb. There are few to no details about this, but on the surface it seems like a very bad thing for Microsoft's Zune marketplace service. Here's why: the Zune Marketplace is based off of URGE. By "based off of", I mean it's exactly the same thing, only with a different skin and different music promotions. The URGE back-end provides all the music for the Zune Marketplace. Now if this back-end is merged with Rhapsody, what are the odds that Rhapsody will leave it intact enough to be used by the Zune Marketplace?

There are many questions here: why didn't Microsoft just buy URGE themselves so they'd have a stable music platform for the Zune? The entire point in Microsoft doing the Zune was to control the experience, end to end, and try to come up with something comparable to the iPod, and certainly better than the chaos that was PlaysForsure with it's myriad of devices and music services. I doubt Microsoft is making much, if anything, off their Zune Marketplace music sales with URGE acting as the middleman between them and the music studios.

We have to remember that while Rhapsody eventually was a PlaysForSure music partner, when Microsoft announced that the Zune wasn't PlaysForSure, we saw Rhapsody and Sandisk join together and make a lot of noise about their music+device partnership. It's safe to say that a lot of people in the PlaysForSure industry were a little upset about the Microsoft Zune and what it meant for their businesses.

I'd find it hard to believe that Microsoft wasn't aware of this in advance, but you never know - my hope is that they've worked out a deal with Rhapsody to keep the URGE catalog and future releases inside the Zune marketplace, but unless Rhapsody has a strong financial incentive to do so, why would they continue to work with the Zune? I've emailed my Microsoft contact to ask for a response to this story - I'll post a reply when I receive it.


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