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MTV Digital Chief: Our Music Model Is Better

  • Ad Age, Monday, December 19, 2005 10:01 AM

The business of renting music is generally more profitable for both purveyors of music subscription services and the recording companies they license music from, says Ad Age, which is one reason why MTV Networks' digital chief officer believes MTV and Microsoft will be able to mount a successful challenge to Apple's iTunes. These services are a good value for consumers (some are as little as $5 per month) and they also provide recurring revenue for music labels. Among the major legit music players, iTunes is really the only online music store, while the others--Yahoo! Music, Napster and Rhapsody--are subscription based.  The new MTV-Microsoft project, called Urge, seeks to succeed in this increasingly crowded market dominated by Apple, with 70 percent of the market. MTV has a huge audience, and with the marketing power of Microsoft, analysts think Urge could be going places. The Viacom unit intends to aggressively market the service to its core 12-34 demo through contextual ads on its own Web pages.

 

 

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