urge

(UPDATE: RealNetworks has filed an 8-K form with the SEC that contains some more details about Rhapsody America. Most notable: MTV is contributing a $230 million note to the deal, and RealNetworks will in exchange be required to spend that amount with MTV on advertising. The joint venture is between RealNetworks and MTV, with Verizon as a distribution partner.)

The 2007 Consumer Electronics Show must've held some awkward moments for Microsoft.

The previous year, the company had trumpeted MTV's Urge music store as the showcase for the Windows Media Player 11 that was due to ship with Vista. … Read more

Viacom's MTV has plans to align its digital music strategy with RealNetworks, a move that likely marks the end of a similar partnership between MTV and Microsoft, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal.

A year ago, analysts loved the idea that Microsoft appeared to be challenging Apple's powerhouse music store, iTunes, by joining forces with a music-industry icon in MTV.

But MTV's Urge music service fell flat.

One reason may have been that shortly after Urge launched, Microsoft directed much of its attention toward the Zune music player and a digital download store that … Read more

[This entry has been revised: I didn't read the MediaNet release carefully enough...they are offering DRM-less MP3s, not WMA files. Apologies to anybody whom I misled. My bad.]

Back in May, EMI--one of the big four record labels--agreed to sell its songs through Apple's iTunes without digital rights management (DRM) protection.

Before this move, iTunes and the iPod were technically linked: if you bought a song from iTunes, you could only play it on an iPod (unless you burned it to CD then re-ripped it into an unprotected format). Offering DRM-less downloads severed this link, allowing … Read more