MTV Urge: only two players forever?

Not really. After seeing , I started investigating the claim that MTV's Urge music service would never let you deauthorize a portable device. If true, it would mean that if one of your devices was lost, stolen, or broken, you wouldn't be able to replace it with another to use with your Urge subscription. In other words: a major bummer. A call to my contact at MTV confirmed that Urge does indeed allow for the deauthorization of players, with the standard restriction of replacing just one player per 30 days so that you're not constantly rotating in devices. The rep stated that they were currently working on building a Device Management page under the Account Summary section, but in the meantime, users could contact customer service in order to deauthorize devices. However, when I called customer service the next morning to try to deauthorize my iRiver Clix, I was told that I could not deauthorize my player...ever. Hmmmm.

I thought perhaps the makers hadn't really run into this issue yet, as the service has only been around for a few weeks, and most people probably haven't needed to deauthorize a player in that short time. But a few calls back and forth to my MTV contact and the customer service center yielded even more confusing results. Finally, I got one last call from MTV: deauthorization has not yet been built into the Urge service. It's something that MTV's engineers are working on while the service is in beta, but it will definitely be allowed. Interestingly enough, though, this doesn't really matter. After I got off the phone, I decided to see what would happen if I tried to sync up a third device with Urge...and it worked. Apparently, the two-device restriction is also being built in during beta. Maybe if everything works out, both systems will be put in place simultaneously. In the meantime, I have three MP3 players running smoothly with Urge--sweet.