On Monday, I reviewed the Lala.com streaming music service in the cloud. Today, I’ll be looking at one of its main competitors, MOG.com. MOG takes the problem of global music access and attacks it in a different way than Lala, using a $5/month all access pass to their entire music library. There’s still a concept of “My Library” on MOG, but you can really just think of these songs as bookmarks. Once you pay the fee, you’re inside the door, able to stream anything they have to offer, on demand.
As I’m writing this post, I’m listening to Zach Galifianakis’ celebrity playlist via my MOG.com 3-day free trial. This wouldn’t be possible on a service like Lala (at least not more than once), because Lala requires you to have purchased individual songs before listening. It’s this fact alone that makes MOG more than your personal music service – it becomes an exciting place for people looking to discover new music and broaden their tastes. Think of it as a big record store that requires a small fee to get in, but won’t kick you out if you want to hang out there all day.
Music Discovery Engine
The most unique feature to MOG.com’s approach is a single horizontal slider built into the music player. When you drag the slider all of the way to the left, the songs that follow the current queue will be from the same artist. To listen only to similar artists, drag the slider all of the way to the right. Anywhere in between, you get a mix between the current artist’s songs and songs from similar artists (as shown in the above screenshot). The ability to control the discovery engine at this level of granularity is attractive to the power music listener.
Paying for Music??? That’s so 1994.
I know, I know. Paying for music has become a radical idea. But why? We gladly pay upwards of $100/month for cable or satellite packages, $10-20 for a Netflix subscription, and some people even spend $5/day on coffee. Make one less trip to Starbucks or eat one less value meal per month and enjoy the music discovery goodness that is MOG.com.
Mobile MOG on the Way!
One of my qualms with Lala was its lack of mobility, especially pertaining to Google’s Android platform. I honestly don’t see Apple releasing a Lala Android app, and if they do, it won’t be anytime soon. Mog, however, has just recently announced that MOG will be available on the Android and iPhone platforms in Q2 of 2010. Sure, the mobile service will cost you $10/month (including the regular web MOG subscription), but at least there will be a mobile option.
In short, I’d recommend MOG to you if you’re an avid music listener who wants to discover new music regularly. However, if you need access to a smaller subset of this library (50 or less albums), it might be more cost-efficient to purchase the 10 cent web songs on Lala. I’ll leave you with an easily-digestible list of the pros and cons I’ve encountered after using MOG for a day:
Pros
- On-demand access to most popular songs.
- If MOG goes out of business, you’re not really out any money (as opposed to Lala)
- Fun features like celebrity playlists (like iTunes except all of the songs are included in the subscription).
- Android and iPhone (?) apps will be available soon (solving Lala’s current lack of mobility).
Cons
- No support for scrobbling to Last.fm (Lala supports this with a beta feature)
- Scrolling the playlist in the Flash player causes audio glitches
- $5/ month subscription model may be too expensive for the normal music consumer
- Music library may be large, but many of my favorite albums aren’t available
Maybe all of this will be moot once (if?) Spotify launches stateside.
MOG : All Access review
As I’m writing this post, I’m listening to Zach Galifianakis’ celebrity playlist via my MOG.com 3-day free trial. This wouldn’t be possible on a service like Lala (at least not more than once), because Lala requires you to have purchased individual songs before listening. It’s this fact alone that makes MOG more than your personal music service – it becomes an exciting place for people looking to discover new music and broaden their tastes. Think of it as a big record store that requires a small fee to get in, but won’t kick you out if you want to hang out there all day.
Music Discovery Engine
The most unique feature to MOG.com’s approach is a single horizontal slider built into the music player. When you drag the slider all of the way to the left, the songs that follow the current queue will be from the same artist. To listen only to similar artists, drag the slider all of the way to the right. Anywhere in between, you get a mix between the current artist’s songs and songs from similar artists (as shown in the above screenshot). The ability to control the discovery engine at this level of granularity is attractive to the power music listener.
Paying for Music??? That’s so 1994.
I know, I know. Paying for music has become a radical idea. But why? We gladly pay upwards of $100/month for cable or satellite packages, $10-20 for a Netflix subscription, and some people even spend $5/day on coffee. Make one less trip to Starbucks or eat one less value meal per month and enjoy the music discovery goodness that is MOG.com.
Mobile MOG on the Way!
One of my qualms with Lala was its lack of mobility, especially pertaining to Google’s Android platform. I honestly don’t see Apple releasing a Lala Android app, and if they do, it won’t be anytime soon. Mog, however, has just recently announced that MOG will be available on the Android and iPhone platforms in Q2 of 2010. Sure, the mobile service will cost you $10/month (including the regular web MOG subscription), but at least there will be a mobile option.
In short, I’d recommend MOG to you if you’re an avid music listener who wants to discover new music regularly. However, if you need access to a smaller subset of this library (50 or less albums), it might be more cost-efficient to purchase the 10 cent web songs on Lala. I’ll leave you with an easily-digestible list of the pros and cons I’ve encountered after using MOG for a day:
Pros
Cons
Maybe all of this will be moot once (if?) Spotify launches stateside.