“MOG is where your music listening dreams come true. All of them. Weird.”
There’s something about music that has the ability to lift your spirits, crush your soul or keep you even-keeled. Maybe it’s an inherent trait that’s built into all of us or maybe I’m an emo kid that relies on music to dictate what mood I’m going to be in. Either way, I have MOG to thank for turning me onto new and old music I might not otherwise have heard or remembered.
“Music is the universal language of mankind”
Let me preface this by saying that online music streaming services like Pandora or last.fm have never had a lasting impact. I once referred to Pandora’s Music Genome Project as a jackass. Why? The music recommendation algo stinks. And I hate the fact that I have to wait around for the artist I actually want to listen to to come on once an hour. I’ll deal with the ads if you simply let me listen to the music I want to hear and not the crap you think I want to hear.
Can it be that different?
The short answer is yes. MOG differentiates itself in a number of ways from other services because of its ability to stream over 7 million tracks from indie labels to the Big Four on demand at a high bit rate. But that’s not all. MOG is all about choice and if you’re shelling out any amount of money, you should have control over what you’re going to listen to, right? The Berkeley, CA-based service lets you listen to any artist for as long as you want, whenever you want. Skip tracks as many times as you want. Like I said, you’re paying for the service so do what you will.
I go through my many moods during any given day and sometimes I want to hear similar artists – something I don’t typically do – and MOG lets you do that to varying degrees. Mix it up as much as you want or as little as you want. The pop up player has a slider that allows you to do so on the fly. Search for artists or albums through the pop up player. Create, search, share and save playlists with other MOG users. You can even share what you’re listening to with your virtual friends on Facebook and Twitter. Really like that track or album? Get it from Amazon with one click. Lyrics are there as well for your perusal.
But is there an app for that?
There will be in the next few weeks. MOG CEO David Hyman officially announced the iPhone and Android apps (full voice search implementation) at SXSW a few minutes ago. I briefly saw an early build of the iPhone app while visiting MOG HQ earlier this month and ever since then I’ve been lusting over it. The app not only syncs your MOG playlists and MOG library of music from your desktop to your device (and vice versa) but also saves them locally in your “My Downloads” section for offline listening. There’s no cap on how many songs you can download (at 320kb/s) either. You’ll soon be able to stream MOG’s entire collection to your device.
All Access to MOG costs $5/month for unlimited online access from your desktop, which is incredibly cheap given the features (over 7 million tracks on demand) and control but for an additional $5/month you’ll get All Access on your device as well. I’d be happy to pay $10/month for unlimited access from wherever I am.
AUSTIN, Texas, March 15, 2010 – MOG (www.mog.com), the Web’s best on-demand music
listening service and music blogging hub, today demonstrated its new MOG All Access mobile
streaming music application for smartphones. The application will be available initially on
iPhone and Android platforms. The service, which will be available in early Q2, will cost $10
per month for unlimited listening and includes the desktop service as well.“The whole point of putting music in the cloud is to be able to get to it whenever you want it,
from anywhere and mobile was always an end goal for us,” said David Hyman, founder and
CEO of MOG. “We started by building the best desktop music experience and now we’ve taken
all of the features of the website and created the best way to listen to music on a mobile device.”With MOG All Access Mobile, users will be able to access MOG’s full music catalog of seven
million songs from a smartphone. Features include:• On-demand listening: Users can listen to any artist, album, or song, on-demand, in
unlimited amounts.
• MOG Radio: Users can hear an unending stream of music based on a track or artist, with
full control over how many similar artists are mixed in. Because MOG Radio is built
right into the play queue, the music never has to stop.
• Music discovery technology: With an innovative slider control, users can decide if they
want to listen to true “artist only” radio, or allow for the introduction of similar artists
into the playlist queue.
• Seamless integration between website and mobile: Users can access the playlists they
make at MOG.com for on-the-go listening. They can also bookmark favorites while using
the mobile app that are then integrated into their personal library.
• My Downloads: Users can, in unlimited fashion, download songs to their phone into a
“local cache” so they can continue to listen to music even when out of cell or WiFi range.
• HQ Audio: Users can download songs at the standard rate of 64 kbps or turn on HQ
downloads to save the song as a larger file with higher audio quality.“MOG All Access with mobile is the holy grail for music fans “Hyman continued. “For $10 a
month, you get access from your phone or PC to 7 million songs on demand along with our
fantastic radio programming. It doesn’t get any better.”