Yes, that is true, 16 is also for urgency and safety messages, but ideally channel 70 should supersede 16 as the routine calling channel. Of course, for that to happen the equipment has to be made actually user friendly. It would be trivial to implement the software to let the OOW simply click an AIS target on the ECDIS to have that target's MMSI entered into the transceiver and a call initiated. If ships were running on free software someone would have already done that, sent a pull request to the ECDIS software maintainer, have it pass perfectly repeatable and transparent integration test suites to make sure the patch won't make the ship go keel up, and Bob's your uncle. But for some reason people seem afraid of this proposition.

As for music, last time I heard that was in the Java sea, but Americans aren't much better, making securité calls when moving their Bayliners, or the USCG with their incessant babble about irrelevant things.