URGE music service.
It features MTV and VH1 (along with the country music channel) and is offered with Microsoft Windows Media Player. It sounds like it should be shit, doesn’t it? Well it isn’t!
For $10 per month, you get all you can eat music downloads, similar to the napster and yahoo services. This means you can download, or more importantly, stream any music you feel like listening to at any time. They have an obviously superior selection when compared to the iTunes music store, and I’ve been able to find pretty much anything I’ve looked for, including local bands from the Las Vegas area.
I absolutely LOVE this service, but I’d like to explain how I go about listening, discovering, and paying for the music that I listen to.
In my car, I listen to Sirius satellite radio. I listen to Howard Stern for the most part, but there are times that I listen to the current hip hop stations, or the modern jazz station instead. As I hear tracks I like, I commit the artists to memory and resolve to do some further reading and listening once I’ve got a free moment in front of the computer. This is where URGE really makes itself into a killer app. I can start in the URGE service, and listen to any track from that artist that I would like to check out. I can also follow the very reliable and accurate similar artist links, as well as check out 3-4 internet radio streams that will play music most similar to the tunes I’m looking at.
If I really love the artist, I purchase the physical CD and add it into my library, so that I can do things like burn CDs for friends, or play the tracks on my home network.
In the future, when I get myself an Internet capable Windows MCE (Media Center Edition) machine, I may even be able to do away with the purchase of the CDs altogether. For an additional $4 per month, I can authorize a music player which will allow me to copy any tracks I’d like to my portable player. Purchasing a car stereo unit with the appropriate USB or audio line in connections, I can take my music with me for public usage as well as enjoying a huge library in my car at any time. I’m currently considering the Toshiba Gigabeat unit ( http://www.gigabeat.com/ ), which also supports video, pictures, and various other music formats.
I was reluctant to buy into the monthly service fee, due to issues with what I considered ownership and various DRM problems, but in my opinion, with only a few simple steps this subscription model will satisfy every condition I have for a lifelong commitment.
Some features that I’d love to see implemented are as follows :
1. I’d like to see a temporary (3 day perhaps) authorization for Windows Media Player with my account. If I am on vacation, or at a friends house, I’d love to be able to access the service from wherever I’d like to at the time. I’d also like to give a temporary login to a friend which would allow them access to a personal page featuring only playlists that I’ve created for them. Obviously this login would only be temporarily authorized (7 days would be fine) but it would allow me to share music playlists/mix CDs without having to physically distribute media.
2. I’d love to see integration with the Satellite services given the appropriate authorization. I don’t see this happening, ever, but it would be great!
3. I’d like to upload my own collection to the servers, so that I can access things like Live recordings, or songs I’ve recorded myself. Google gave us a gigabyte for information, I bet Microsoft can foot it. The cost associated with the service could correspond to a bump in the monthly fee. It would be worth it, as I could share my songs and have access to them through a single interface.
4. A lightweight web interface would be sweet for Macs, Linux boxes, and other OSes that I may be on at any given time. I don’t want to be seperated from my music in any case, really.
5. I need more authorized units!! The system currently allows up to 3 computers to be authorized, but in all honesty it won’t be enough to support me in every situation…in fact, it really is only enough to support my PC, my wife’s PC, and a Media center. What about my daughter’s PC, my bedroom’s unit, my Tivo, my Xbox 360, or whatever else I’m interesting in using it for? In a digitally connected world we’re likely to have considerably more units in our lives. I can live with the limitations of the system, but it would be great to expand those rights situationally to make it more flexible.
7. Xbox 360 Support. Make its features as a media center extender even more attractive by including URGE service support on any Xbox 360 in the house. I’d love to strap a 7″ LCD on the unit and put Xbox units all over my house for music, and miscellaneous video.
The service is great, and it satisfies pretty much every condition that I have, given the price, but adding the above features would make it so attractive to me that I’d be a very hard sell for any other service.
