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The music industry began a huge transformation in the Napster-age and that story continues to unfold with the proliferation of mobile technology. The profitability of streaming music services is still questionable, especially considering the stance of record companies and leverage of industry leaders like Apple’s iTunes. But one company determined to become a dominant player is MOG… and today they just took an important step with a pretty huge announcement.
At SXSW, MOG announced the upcoming availability of its Android (and iPhone) application that will cost $10/month and allow unlimited streaming of 7-million songs, radio stations, and downloads. That’s right – although the service is streaming, it allows you to download songs to a “local cache” that allows for playback even when out of cell phone or Wi-Fi range.
The MOG Blog today highlighted several of the top tech sources covering the news:
“As for the radio offering, it impressed us too. Subscribers to MOG.com already enjoy artist radio with a slider that allows you to create an artist station consisting only of songs by that artist, mostly songs by related artists, or anywhere in between. The same feature will be available in the mobile apps, where subscribers can tap any song in a radio playlist to see the album and download songs from it.” — Wired.com
“All of MOG’s on-demand streaming functionality looks great, but the killer feature is offline downloading. Using this, users can tap on a song or album they like and choose to download it to their iPhone or Android device, allowing you to seamlessly use the application when your phone doesn’t have connectivity.” —TechCrunch.com
“For people who are used to free music options, they’re feeling like the value we provide for five dollars a month is better than free,” Hymen said. “When we built Mog, every day we said to ourselves for years, ‘Music’s already free. What could we give somebody for five dollars a month that just blows away free?” —CNET
“We weren’t at SXSW, but if we were… we would have had an equally impressive quote for MOG to feature on their blog. Total sweetness!” — Phandroid
Okay… okay… MOG didn’t have that quote from us on their site. And we didn’t say that anywhere besides this article. But we felt left out so I shoehorned myself in there. But in all honestly this IS a pretty huge announcement for music-lovers out there.
And to be fair – Spotify already has a similar service churning over in Europe where they seem to be a bit more progressive in terms of digital content ownership/use.
I’ve been waiting for this! I loved MOG, but hated that I could only use it on my computer. :)
I have to say this sounds like a good way to go. Slacker does already have a cache station option, but this sound like you can be more specific about what you cache.
So basically the exact same functionality as I already pay Grooveshark $3 a month for..!
In the article, it says $10/month, but in their quote they say $5/month. Which is accurate?
Check out the band that OWNED mog.com’s website back in 2005…
MõG http://mogmusic.net
And, their vid that has over 103,000 views
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DoeS4pwPPU
Was just about to say “so Spotify then”