All hate mail from Mac freaks regarding this post should take two things into consideration. First, we at Igor are Mac freaks as well, at home and at work. We do, however, have the obligatory ratty PC’s in the backroom, which we reluctantly fire up when working on a Windows only project. Second, we were paid a boatload of money to name URGE. On to the meat.
The combination of the branding muscle of MTV and the content they alone own and continue to create, may finally take a big bite out of Apple. Until now, all music services offered the same content. Apple succeeded by being the only one to integrate software + music store + hardware (iPod). Not anymore. Now there is a competitor to all three parts of this process, plus great proprietary content, and that is likely to begin the shift of hardware players, even iPods, toward commodity status.
Out of the ashes of commoditization of digital media, MTV and Microsoft are poised to create a strong brand that rises above the level of mere commodity. In other words, URGE will succeed by becoming bigger than the goods and services it offers.
Yes, Microsoft + cool is probably the toughest sell on the planet, which is one reason this scenario so fascinating.
But most intriguing is the idea that the culture of music is about to be de-commoditized, to be once again more interesting than the device it is played on.
Which is how should be. And how it was, back in the day. Way back, when there was music on MTV.
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