MOG’s much anticipated All Access music service launches today for anyone to come and give it a try. I’ve been using the service for the last few weeks and, despite my initial skepticism over the fact that users must pay for the service, I’ve been impressed. MOG makes millions of songs available users on demand over the Internet. The user experience and social aspects of the service put it far ahead of any online music service available today, and it’s well worth the $5/month.
All Access is a nearly flawless product that is an absolute joy to use.
MOG, founded in 2005, was essentially a social music portal and advertising network until today. But they’ve been working on this All Access product for well over a year now, hoping at first to provide it free to consumers. But the big music label’s willingness to dabble in free streaming music to consumers is clearly waning – and so MOG was forced to charge users for the service.
And I think a lot of users may just be willing to pay for the service once they realize how much better it is than it’s most obvious competitor, MySpace Music.
For whatever reason MySpace has been slow to iterate on its year-old service. The service remains slow and buggy. Getting to and listening to music requires more steps than it should. And the advertising is often intrusive. Perhaps it’s the fact that they have to pay every time a user listens to a song, but sometimes it just seems like MySpace Music is trying to slow you down rather and add friction to the music experience.
MOG, by contrast, just flies. Searching, discovering, saving and listening to music is intuitive and fun. The social aspects of the service let you share and discover new music with friends. And the user experience will be an inspiration to the next generation of web designers.
And as if that wasn’t enough, MOG Radio, a feature of All Access, is just about the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Or rather, heard.
Our complete overview of the service is below. But don’t rely on us, give it a try. MOG is letting people test the service for free for an hour, without any obligation (no credit card required). And we’re also pleased to give 250 TechCrunch readers a one month free membership to MOG All Access. Just email TechCrunch@MOG.com, first come first serve.
Overview Of MOG All Access
Music Library: MOG has songs from all four major labels: Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and EMI Music. And they also a deep collection of indies as well. If the music is legally available anywhere online, it’ll likely be available on MOG.
Overall user experience: Prepare to be shocked. Everything is as it should be. Music is played via a fully controllable pop up window, so you don’t have to stay on the full site. You’ll see album art and information on the song currently being played. Related music is listed below the song, or, if you’re listening to a playlist, other songs on the list. There are no restrictions on skipping or changing songs at all, and the service responds as quickly and crisply as if it were a desktop application.
One feature I love – lyrics for whatever song you’re listening to are one click away.
Search & Discovery: It’s awesome. Search by artist, album or song. Or a combination. Search is very fast – as I said above, it’s a lot like using a desktop application like iTunes to search for music sitting on your hard drive.
And if you can’t think of what you want to listen to, check out the playlists that others have created and made public. MOG ranks them using an algorithm to push the most popular and most played lists to the top. Or find other users who you share music tastes with and follow them. You’ll see what they’re listening to.
MOG Radio: This is worth the $5/month alone. If you’re a Pandora fan you’ll know the joy of typing in a song or artist you love and listening to music from other related artists. It’s an amazing way to discover new music. But MOG goes way beyond what Pandora offers. Not only are there no ads and you can skip songs at will without limitations, they let you decide exactly what you want to listen to.
Only want to hear David Bowie songs? No problem. Just keep the slider (see image) all the way to the left. But if you want a more Pandora-like experience, slide it to the right and get some Iggy Pop, Queen, Duran Duran and other artists you might like as well.
Pandora doesn’t let you just listen to one artist because it changes the nature of their music license from radio to on-demand. MOG doesn’t care because they pay a set fee per user per month to the labels no matter how much music you listen to. So if there’s band you love and don’t want to bother creating a playlist, just type it in, set the music slider to the left, and listen to as much of their music as you want.
Library And Playlists: If you stumble onto a song you love, you can one-click save it to your library or put it into a playlist. See more on playlists in our post here.
Wish List: As I said, MOG is nearly flawless. But I do have a few requests. First, I’d like to be able to type two or three artists into search and create a radio station on the fly that only plays those artists. MOG says that is something they’re considering. Another request – I’d love it if MOG could scan my iTunes collection and automatically add all those songs and Playlists to my MOG library.
I’ve been trying to get actual songs to play for a while, but they all seem to just perpetually load. Lost 20 minutes of my free hour trial, but if their selection is *at least* as good as Napsters, I’ll switch as the interface is definitely prettier/snappier. Add last.fm scrobbling and I’m in love.
they’re a little slow I noticed as they launch. But right now it’s flying for me. listening to White Stripes.
Hmm. I’m having no luck at all. I’m not really surprised/disappointed though, a new service is bound to have issues the first day(first hour even), especially when they’re as hyped as this.
Went ahead and took the leap anyways. Easy enough to cancel if I feel the need too(Thank god they let you do that from the settings panel).
Chris and anyone else seeing an issue,
Please email support@mog.com so we can resolve it quickly.
hey, this is flying for me. no issues at all.
GROOVESHARK.com free and rlly rlly good.
Grooveshark isn’t that exciting. No deeper content, I couldn’t figure out how to build a radio station. and the music search results are a mess.
And since Grooveshark is illegal it’s either not going to be around for a while or have real problems building a better platform. Legal problems killed Playlist.com and others.
Oh and they’re also the ones who are making this whole music thing not work for the masses. Total BS IMO.
omg. there was a music thread on reddit and someone linked a grooveshark playlist. this grooveshark thing is my new discovery. it was a really great experience. i got the interface. i like th elayout and the design. i think they should allow people to customize their page set up/layout but aside from that it was fine. i didn’t sign up for it but i can still play songs for free. i didn’t know it was illegal. it was pretty easy to set up the radio. remindes me a little bit of my yahoo music account before i left yahoo. anyways i’m not a shill. i honestly saw this grooveshark thing on a reddit thread about some guy dj’ing (haha or not actually dj’ing in the true sense of the word but setting up an apple computer at a party) a party and asking for some music recommendations. anyways so my first grooveshark experience was great.
I’m still a Grooveshark fan which does mostly the same thing plus their desktop app is pretty slick. Spotify who?
is an iPhone app around the corner?
Yes, it is in development right now.
Or an Android app, for that matter?
+1 on this request
Seconds this.
So how do we get the free passes?
“And we’re also pleased to give 250 TechCrunch readers a one month free membership to MOG All Access. Just email TechCrunch@MOG.com, first come first serve.”
You should have mentioned it’s not available in France… I guess I’ll stick with Spotify.
As for my free pass:
go to mog.com/vip and enter this code for a free month-long subscription:
2bbbaaa8e9
- whoever is first…
An hour of free music? Give me a break. I don’t care how good the UI is, the space is so crowded few people are going to be compelled to pay after an hour.
i just did the hour trial. can’t complain. they’ve gotta draw users in, and an hour to listen to almost anything really gives a good dose of why it does make it worth it. much better than what ive heard about spotify too.
I’m in the middle of my hour and I’m seriously considering ponying up the $5 for at least one month. It’s easy (and annoying) to get free music, but it’s not easy to find a fun and interactive (and not annoying) service like this.
Any info on when it will be available in Europe?
April/Mai, 2010.
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/12/mog-launches-5-music-streaming-today.html (see comments)
The service does sound great – was hoping to compare it to Spotify but it’s not available in the UK.
Any idea if/when it will go international?
sounds great, ill definitely have to give it a try.
Add an android app and I would be in looooove.
the radio feature and the social playlists make it far more interesting than Spotify imo.
Spotify offers both features:
Collaborative (social) playlists:
http://www.spotify.com/blog/archives/2008/01/30/collaborative-playlists/
Artist Radio:
http://www.spotify.com/en/about/features/
Spotify’s radio could be better, but Spotify definitely has social playlists. Look on their ressources page, section “Playlist Sites”: http://bit.ly/8nZkYP
Ok, I just started using the free month I got, and even though I like the UI and playlists, I can already see a big problem.
A lot of the albums are the edited versions.
What.
The.
Fuck.
I am an adult, I am capable of hearing bad words. I don’t think I would pay for a service that force fed me child’s versions of my music.
Well doesn’t quite work now… I guess people should wait a little bit before trying their “free 1 hour” trial period.
It does not work in Europe
It does not have King Crimson
What the heck?
typical of all the music apps we can’t get it here in Czech. I would probably be willing to pay for this as well. I can understand ad supported apps not being available (the ads are not targeted to this part of the world so make no money) but surely if we are willing to pay for it what’s the problem?
So far, really impressed. Lots of songs grayed out for some reason and a couple 503 errors. But to be expected on launch day.
Already subscribed.
Unless they offer a iphone app for the music, I won’t be buying … who listens to streaming only music thru a browser anymore???
iPhone app coming early 2010!
I stream through my browser into my home stereo via Airfoil. This service has baseically taken over my CD collection AND radio. Been cranking The Clash radio all day! The higher bit rate makes a HUGE difference when you move from crappy computer speakers to a real stereo system.
keep it up MOG!
Mobile schmobile…if it is going to cost $15/month for mobile access, it will be as worthless/pointless as all the other $15/mo. ‘portable’ music services. Who would pay that much for spotty/lo-fi streaming to their phone?
Hmmm… the first album I tried to stream seems to be unavailable:
I searched for Department of Eagles – In Ear Park and it showed up in the search results but the album isn’t available for streaming. I wonder if this is a bug, or if their collection of available songs isn’t as good as promised?
Who?
Of course it won’t have every band but it sure has a lot I like and now I don’t to by tracks or CD’s on thousands of artists.
The stuff I need and can’t find, i’ll get elsewhere but for $5/month, this is a great music collection.
“MOG’s much anticipated All Access music service launches today for anyone to come and give it a try. ”
–> WRONG:
“We’re sorry but due to licensing restrictions, MOG All Access is not yet available in Germany (your IP address is xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx). If this is not in fact your country, please contact support@mog.com so that we can figure out what happened.”
When will it be available in GERMANY?
Hi Andreas, we’re working on expanding MOG service into Europe next year.
Andreas, just try http://www.simfy.de …
The site works, but I still prefer Lala. UI is a bit clunky (I don’t think it should be giving me pop-up windows every time I want to play a song) and if I want to download an MP3, it should be done through MOG. I don’t want to have to go to another service.
I think Lala’s community and sharing features are better too- sharing a song with a friend or an album, it’s just easier.
MOG’s $5 a month model is better than Lala’s- but to date, neither have mobile apps. Yet. That’s going to be the deciding factor.
Mobile apps coming early 2010!
huh? I can’t believe you’re actually using it. I can’t see myself ever downloading an mp3 from mog.
Have you created a playlist and made it public yet? Lala seems way more clunky to me.
I love Lala for finding something specific, but I’m using Mog right now, and the radio feature and playlist thing just seems effortless. I want this in my car though…
I don’t really understand how this is considered to be a groundbreaking service. I consider myself to be a power listener to music, and I was really excited about this service given my dissatisfaction with Rhapsody. However, I found quickly that all the hype is just hype.
While amusing, the artist radio slider feature seems a bit pointless: do I really want to specifically listen to a station that’s 18.5% one artist with similar artists filling in the rest? Don’t get me wrong, I like to have that option, but I would definitely also like the option to specify additional artists in the mix (ala Pandora).
Even with an automatic way of presenting me music that I may enjoy, with the amount of music I listen to and rate, I need to be able to quickly generate a list of songs that I already know that I like within a certain genre/mood. Mog does not provide this. The service does offer a 1-5 star rating system buried in the detail pages of the tracks, but there’s no way to view or set that rating from the player. Even if there were, I can’t create an automatic playlist that will give me all rock songs rated 4-5 stars.
The lack of song tagging is common between Mog and Rhapsody, but I can kind of get around that in both by adding songs to playlists. In Rhapsody, there’s an arbitrary limit of 800 songs per playlist, but that can be worked around by creating multiple playlists and stitching them together using an auto playlist. Though I haven’t tested the capacities of Mogs playlist feature, it’s clear that they consider it in term of a “mix tape” suggesting that users keep them between 30-60 minutes long.
Whereas Rhapody’s interface feels like a cheap, awkward knock-off of iTunes, Mog provides nothing more than a better way of searching and weak automatic playlist generation.
The 30-60 minute playlist suggestion was meant for users intending to share playlists with other Moggers, certainly playlists meant for personal listening should be as long as you want them to be!
Additionally, instead of creating playlists to collect songs, you can save songs that you like into your library, just click “Save” within the player and then select “My Library”.
Can you elaborate Jason, I just did the trial, and then signed up. I have pretty unique tastes, and actually found that radio slider thing sort of did exactly what you’re describing. I started a radio station of a particular kind of music by starting a particular tune, sliding the slider to the right (similar artists), and it seemed to work really well in creating a list of tunes.
Playing a list of tunes based on rating seems like a nice idea, but would probably be useless to me. But is it that you want to be able to search for music based on certain tags, like “western swing” “halloween” “metal”, that kind of thing?
So far it’s really been great, I would really love to get this on my iphone…
I never meant to say that the slider didn’t work well, my point was that I feel being able to slide it from position 3 to position 4 seems less important than being able to specify additional artists.
I agree that service does what it does well, it’s just not as feature-rich as I would like. As for tagging, I was meaning it in a more personal sense versus searching. In Rhapsody, for example, I easily add the entire discographies of The Eagles, Steve Miller Band, and Led Zeppelin to a playlist called “Classic Rock”. Then, I can listen to a filtered subset of that list called “Unrated Classic Rock” to go through tracks that I haven’t heard yet. Afterward, I will be able to pull up “5 Star Classic Rock” for what I think is the very best, “4-5 Star Classic Rock”, etc. I make up my own labels with their own meaning without relying solely on pre-determined genres or the arbitrary choices of others…
Jason – I had the same initial frustration with the artist radio mixes until I realized it’s because I was trying to use it like Pandora because I was used to not having control. You can see what’s coming down the queue and then skip around as much as you like! You also still have the thumbs up and thumbs down to tweak what’s being placed in the mix. I think most of the old functionality is there but better, just have to think about it differently.
ummm, you must be on drugs. i’ve been using this for an hour and i’ve just cancelled my rhapsody subscription. grooveshark is a silly toy that has no catalog. this is ridiculously good.
I’ve been wondering when the movie industry/tv industry is really going to bank on this model. All the attempts that I know of have just not been able to beat what I pay now to get them through other means.
If I pay 11 bucks for usenet access and 3 bucks every 3 months for newzbin… I would switch in a heartbeat if I could get an amazing song selection and a movie/tv selection for something like 5-10 bucks a month.
No free service, no mobile support, lacking songs and the service is sooo slow. I will stick with the other players.
i prefer the commercial-free experience of listening as opposed to sites like pandora. definitely a great draw to get me to pay for the service. plus, it’s cool you can skip to the next song and see what tracks are coming up.
I have to chime in here. So slow? It’s all instantaneous to me. Try restarting or something. I’m pretty surprised by the speed. Surprised you don’t have to download anything. Do you work for the competition or something?
And as far as missing songs goes, I listen to a lot of jazz, and this catalog totally blows away any of the other services so far. What artists are you not finding?
As a provider of new technology (that can also deliver music) I have to say MOG is really an impressive offering, congratulation for getting it right. I am signing up simply because I know my wife will LOVE this service similar to how we enjoy Netflix.
Makes me fell a hell of a lot better that I did not try to create a music website, I would feel very defeated right now.
I really hope to work with these guys at some point, very good decisions made with MOG.
fell=feel
Shame on you competitors with the zealot posts (no mobile, ahh I am going to wait).
There is nothing wrong with giving props to a service who does such a good job getting of the ground. Please stop the soft bashing.
Oh, all done? I was wondering how long your obsequious conversation with yourself would last…
You should meet me in person and meet all 3 of me, no really, it’s a New Yorker thing.
Here here William. If one more person complains about mobile they are idiots.
I think there are about 4 comments in this and other articles by the company themselves about mobile coming in Q1. And for those who aren’t familiar with a calendar, that’s in a couple months.
I’ll spend that time building my library and playlists. I’ll be ready to rock when that sucker is released.
William, thanks for the props! Mobile apps coming early 2010.
Maestro.fm … you actual music and thousands of playlists from around the world… for free.
Slow news day?
This is Yahoo Music all over again. How long did that last? I know I was signed up for few months when I started school. It was like 8 bucks a month or something, access all you want. Didn’t last.
this is already better than yahoo music ever was. have you tried it out? the sound is amazing and the loading is fast!
Ohh! Emm! Gee! I’m loosing count of all the music streaming sites that are out there.
…nothing new, just ‘more of the same.’
Chiwuzie, try us out for free! In the development of our music player, we’ve addressed many pain points that streaming music listeners have complained about with other services. The concept of music streaming may not be new, but the level of awesomeness surely is.
Alright dude, I’ll give it a shot. it better be good
I was really hoping to see a little more of a sneak about what the mobile strategy is. To me that’s a deal-killer. There are plenty of all-you-can-eat music services out there – Rhapsody to name just one… but I want to see how it all ties together before I commit.
It’s $5 ferchrissakes! It’s not like you’re buying a car! I dont’ get it, what’s the commitment?
The only service that is similar in terms of combining pandora passivity with itunes direct control is Rhapsody. I’m on a Mac, and Rhapsody always totally sucked for me. I love Lala, but it’s just different. I go there when I want to play something specific, but the mog radio thing is killer.
This article reads like a company advertisement… Does this service really offer more than the other pay for catalog services such as Rhapsody? A comparison to Rhapsody is not even mentioned…
ha!! i used to use rhapsody for a brief period and my experiences were awful. i could never get through a whole album without it completely stalling out. plus, it was slow as all hell. i wasted too much time NOT hearing music on that site. this service is treating me like VIP! beautiful stuff.
michael and russell, thanks for mentioning grooveshark… incredible! i’ll try MOG some other day.. rockin out too hard right now to try anything else. Long live audiogalaxy (in the form of grooveshark)
good one. grooveshark has no catalog. find me a whole album on grooveshark. it’s like comparing a tandy trs-80 to an apple powerbook.
Whatever! when did you last try it? Grooveshark has an awesome library and for $30 a year you can make playlists, widgets for your site, share songs, and using the desktop app is great! It’s one of the only AIR programs that don’t quit when the window closes. On top of that it notifies you of the changing songs, and has a Radio function to make it function like Pandora! GROOVESHARK IS AWESOME!
I’m just running it in an old outdated browser and the UI is clean and intuitive. Oh yea it’s FREE and to save my playlists all I had to do is signup, all while my songs kept playing.
FREE, no credit card, now what?
i can’t find whole albums on grooveshark. and aren’t they only have deals with emi? can you say seeqpod! i mean, come on.
“where music listens to you?” Is this the Soviet Union?
Been using All Access for the past month in beta and it’s awesome. At $5/mnth this is one of the best deals on the Web. As MOG fills out its catalog the value will get even better. It’s not perfect yet but it’s perfect enough to satisfy most music fans. Once they launch the mobile version it will be really killer.
Congrats to the MOG team on getting All Access live.