MTV Will Test Its Own Entry in Online Music

A test version of MTV's long-delayed online music service, called Urge, will be introduced on Wednesday.

The service was developed in cooperation with Microsoft, and will be heavily promoted from within the latest version of the Windows Media Player, which also begins public testing Wednesday.

The MTV service largely matches the price and features of other music services, including Napster and RealNetworks. It will cost $9.95 a month for people who want to listen to music on their computers and $14.95 a month for those who want to download songs to portable players. (The service works with many hand-held music players from Samsung, iRiver and other manufacturers, but not the Apple iPod, which dominates the portable market.)

It allows users to download as many songs as they choose from a library of two million tracks, but the pieces downloaded will stop playing if the user stops paying the monthly fee. MTV will also sell permanent downloads for 99 cents a track.

Some of the songs will be from performances on MTV's broadcasts. And MTV Networks, a unit of Viacom, hopes to differentiate its music store with programming and features, many related to its television shows, that will help users find music they like. It has more than 500 preset playlists for various moods and styles. And MTV has started 24 blogs, with different views of current music. The service will also include 130 Internet radio stations.

The MTV service is tightly integrated into the Windows Media Player and is designed to use some of its newer features, like easier ways to search and navigate through very large collections of music.