News from the Music Industry

Called Ignition, the program is designed to expose new artists and their music to consumers for an entire month by featuring exclusive content through Microsoft’s multiple services—including MSN, Xbox Live and Zune.

The first participating act is U.K. band Maximo Park (Warp Records/Caroline Distribution). Microsoft is providing the group’s first single as a free exclusive download via the Zune Marketplace, making the music video available as a free download from the Xbox Live Marketplace and streaming the video on MSN.

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The company will host online listening parties of the act’s current album on MSN Music and provide a custom Web site dedicated to the band and its activities on the zune.net site. And Microsoft is working with the band to produce custom content—such as artist-created playlists and “behind-the-album” commentary featuring track-by-track insights and observations by band members—all available via the Zune service.

Microsoft is demanding exclusive content and hands-on participation from the artists involved. “We don’t want the same thing that is going out on MTV,” Microsoft director of music marketing Christina Calio said.