mtv

Viacom's MTV has plans to align its digital music strategy with RealNetworks, a move that likely marks the end of a similar partnership between MTV and Microsoft, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal.

A year ago, analysts loved the idea that Microsoft appeared to be challenging Apple's powerhouse music store, iTunes, by joining forces with a music-industry icon in MTV.

But MTV's Urge music service fell flat.

One reason may have been that shortly after Urge launched, Microsoft directed much of its attention toward the Zune music player and a digital download store that … Read more

There's a new social network/video discovery service on the way. It's name is Knocka.TV, and I've got to hand it to them--the service isn't even open to the public yet, and there's already a play reel of nearly 30 video clips on the landing page that make it look like a lot of fun. It looks like a hybrid of Joost, StumbleUpon, and YouTube, with some TV-like qualities such as timeslots and user-controlled programming (akin to MTV's Total Request Live and Direct Connect). There could also be a social networking component with … Read more

Jeff Yapp is an executive V.P. at MTV Networks. He's in charge of the cool stuff, including MTV's virtual worlds strategy and its video game products.

At Under the Radar, he showed off the latest innovations from both groups, including Rock Band, an XBox and PS3 game produced by Harmonix, the company that created Guitar Hero, and that MTV acquired in 2006.

In a demo video at UTR, Yapp showed how Rock Band lets four people team up on guitars, drums, and vocals. I think the drum kit is a new idea for video games, but conceptually … Read more

On June 28, Team Webware will be covering Under the Radar: Entertainment and Media, a conference where CEOs from young companies pitch their hearts out to an audience of tight-fisted VCs, skeptical potential customers, and jaded journalists. To prepare for this event, I'm interviewing some of the companies ahead of time. Like Doppelganger, which is a maker of virtual worlds.

Doppelganger CEO Tim Stevens bristled when I compared his currently public project, The Lounge, to Second Life. The Lounge is a smaller world, but it's more focused. Rather than a world that encourages user-generated content above all else, … Read more

Today Revision3 rolled out a new show called XLR8R TV (pronounced like "accelerator"), which is being pitched as a local music and event show for indie folks. Think of it as something you'd see on MTV, but local and without extravagant parties for high schoolers.

XLR8R TV will air twice a month and feature music artists from New York and San Francisco. It's a formula show with reoccurring segments about musicians, their fans, and how they make their music. What interests me is a segment called "A Day in the Life" which follows around … Read more

>> MTV online strategy to help Viacom take on YouTube? Viacom wants you to watch clips of its popular TV shows on the Internet, but it doesn't want you to do so on YouTube. At the beginning of this month, Viacom had YouTube take down more than 100,000 clips of Viacom-owned content. Now it's spreading them out among its sites, including ComedyCentral.com and MTV.com.

>> Belgian court rules against Google over copyrights. Belgian newspapers apparently don't like Google, as they've barred the company from caching its stories for news clippings. The … Read more

-- Find toxic wastelands via Google Earth. The EPA released a master list of landfills and other offenders to the public today in hopes of getting some recognition on mapping services such as Google Earth and Windows Live Local. Here's hoping for a Toxic button next to the beloved satellite view on Google maps. (CNET News)

-- Global digital-music sales nearly doubled in 2006. It was a good year for digital downloads, but they're still coming in at only 10 percent of the total music market. (CNET News)

-- MTV to buy RateMyProfessors.com. With more than 900,… Read more