Talk about your unlikely bedfellows. Microsoft announced Tuesday it would be teaming up MTV Networks Inc to create a new online music sales service along the lines of iTunes, called Urge. The name begs the question...the "urge" to do what? I find this to be a most ironic collaboration effort. Now, I’m stereotyping here so bare with me, but I went on tour with a Christian rock band 3 or 4 separate times since the summer began and I had the privilege of inundating myself amidst the MTV culture of no less than 15 different states from here to Tennessee. I met and talked with them at length before the shows, during, and especially after. Many of them churched, just as many not though. All of them treated us quite amicably though. I followed contractual obligations to dress and wear my hair like they do in an attempt to fool them into think I was ten years younger than I was. To some degree, it’s fair to say that while we were out, I felt like I was undercover. We hung out, I ate their food, I even stayed at several of their houses and I became much more familiar with the television stations that supposedly play music videos than I ever had before. First off, the name MTV used to be an acronym for Music Television. I don’t know if that’s officially still what it stands for but it should refer to Mature TV, as it plays almost no music and shows way too much skin. Secondly (here comes the generalization), the MTV culture that I had a chance to meet, whether they be punks, hippies, gangstas, Britneys, metalheads, or goths, pretty much all hate Microsoft and everything Microsoft stands for. They use terms like “corporate giant”, “evil empire”, and “the borg” as well as spin-offs of the name such as “Microsuck”, etc. I have at times, had my share of distaste for Microsoft and some of their products and services so I’m not completely without some compassion for their causes. Microsoft does tend to make it awfully difficult for ingenuity to develop a better mousetrap. And the current teenage generation of MTV watchers also sport their iPods in every color, shape and size as well as their $200 worth of iPod accessories.
Urge claims it is not an attempt to sway users from the Apple iTunes product, sighting a high majority of iTunes users being tied to the product due to their iPods. Coincidentally iTunes accounts for over 80% of the licensed music purchased online and iPods represent roughly 75% of the portable music market currently. MTV’s Urge is supposedly an attempt to tap the avid music downloader that does not own an iPod market. Microsoft of course has plans to bundle this service within its own Windows Media Player product. They’re banking on the fact that it is simply iPod owners that drive iTunes sales and hope that the market for avid licensed music downloaders that don’t have a portable player of some sort is a larger one.
My take? I think this is one time that Microsoft is most definitely getting in the game with too little too late. Furthermore, Apple is one company that’s big enough, bad enough, and hates Microsoft enough to never, ever sell the market leading product to them (for those unfamiliar with their tactics, too frequently Microsoft’s tactic is to simply buy good software and put their name on it, and then proceed to ruin it in the next version release). The pop culture mecca and the business savvy geekdom have both got their work cut out for them. As for me, here’s one user that loves his iTunes, and is listening to his iPod as he types up his blog about why he thinks MTV and Microsoft’s odd coupling is simply comical on several levels.
Bazooka-Joe made it so at 2:16 PM
