URGE UNDERWHELMS

Bill Gates - who is so rich, he could buy everything in the world, have it stolen, and buy it all over again has already launched a music service once. Now, he's looking to have another launch, with the basically-another-me-too service we heard about before Christmas.

Its called Urge, it had Justin Timberlake at the launch event, and it doesn't work with iPods.

Gates, it seems, has a vision, where you integrate word processing with watching online videos. Yeah, but they laughed when he said he could see everyone using WebTV, don't forget.

Tucked away in the detail is a potentially more interesting development - Gates has done a deal with DirecTV in the States and BSkyB here in the UK; the DirecTV deal will allow people to play satelitte TV through their computer (although, actually, you can do that with any TV card in your PC, so it's the terms of the deal rather than the technology that is of interest.)

But the music offering? A spot of MTV content is all that separates it from Napster. And how's Napster doing?

music mtv bill gates iTunes