Music streaming service MOG is today announcing partnerships with mobile, audio and video equipment manufacturer JVC as well as with Aha by HARMAN, an interactive platform that brings web content to the automobile. The companies will begin using MOG’s APIs to integrate the music service into their platforms and products. The first result of the new partnerships is MOG’s launch on Subaru vehicles.

Aha, which lets drivers access web content through their radios, considers itself the “fourth band” of radio, alongside FM, AM and satellite. On upcoming Subaru models, Aha will deliver a number of services, including the on-demand streaming music from MOG and Rhapsody, Internet radio from SHOUTcast, Slacker and CBS Radio, podcasts, audio books, traffic reports, Twitter and Facebook updates, Yelp recommendations and more. The service works through an iPhone or Android app which will integrate with future Subaru vehicles. (Exact models were not announced, but the company was demonstrating MOG in a 2013 Subaru BRZ).

Currently, Aha is available in aftermarket auto sound systems and as a free iPhone app. Prior to the Subaru launch, the iPhone app will be updated with more stations and content. Aha will release its Android counterpart around the same time.

Aha also has newly announced partnerships with Honda and Kenwood. Those join Pioneer, which began integrating Aha into its products last year. At present, Aha says that Subaru and Honda integration is planned to include MOG, while Kenwood and Pioneer is likely.

In addition to the forthcoming Subaru integration via Aha, MOG is also now working with JVC Americas Corp., a subsidiary of the JVC Kenwood Corporation. The company will be integrating MOG into its aftermarket head systems as well, including JVC’s four new AV Multimedia products being released in 2012.

MOG launched its API platform called MOG Fusion, which is designed for use by consumer electronics and auto manufacturers, at last year’s CES. Its other, previously announced partners include BMW, MINI, Airbiquity, Tweddle and Visteon.

There’s already a bunch of music apps available for Logitech’s Squeezebox (including Rhapsody, Last.fm, Pandora, DI.fm, Napster, Sky.fm, Spotify, Deezer and more) but this morning there was some good news for MOG fans in the United States.

Logitech has teamed up with MOG to give users access to the latter’s music streaming library, which consists of 13 million songs, custom radio stations, artist-only stations and more.

MOG streams on-demand audio at 320 kbps, and is entirely ad-free for subscribers.

Subscriptions begin at $5 per month and new subscribers can sign up for a free 14-day trial.

Unlimited streaming music service MOG is expanding its footprint yet again with a new AT&T deal that will see its mobile application pre-installed on AT&T’s first new LTE smartphones: the Samsung Galaxy S Skyrocket and the HTC Vivid. The app will be pre-loaded onto these two AT&T 4G (LTE) phones, and customers will be able to try the service for free for a week. In addition, the company has integrated with AT&T’s billing system, so customers can pay for MOG via their regular phone bill.

This is the first carrier pre-load deal for the all-you-can-eat streaming music service which is now offering a catalog of over 13 million songs for $9.99/month on mobile. MOG is already available as a standalone iOS app, Android app, desktop app, in BMW vehicles, and on media centers, TVs and Blu-ray players, including LG and Samsung TVs, Samsung Blu-ray players, Boxee, Roku, Sonos and more. The service also recently saw a big bump in usage thanks to the Facebook integration. Over the past month, MOG reported seeing its monthly active users jump over 264%, reaching 160,000 users via its Facebook app during the month of October (source: AppData). If the growth rate continues, that could bring MOG to 2 million Facebook users by year-end, CEO David Hyman says.

Now as a pre-installed app on AT&T’s new LTE phones, the removal of the pre-registration process eliminates a big hurdle in acquiring new mobile user sign-ups. However, MOG will not disclose the current size of its user base, or how many more it expects the AT&T deal to bring, only saying that it expects the growth to be “significant.”

Earlier today we ventured to downtown New York for a demo of a BMW equipped with MOG’s music streaming app. MOG has been working with Mini and BMW on this app for a while. The BMW version is slated to launch in mid-October and it works with BMW’s new ConnectedDrive technology, available in 2011 and beyond models. MOG’s music library contains 12 million songs.

To launch the app, put your iPhone in a dock under the armrest and you’ll see an automotive MOG version of the app display in the infotainment system in the dashboard.

Use the iDrive control dial situated between the seats to select music by artist, album or song. BMW tells us they have done significant testing to ensure the system is safe for driving. Controls are also available on the steering wheel and instrument panel.

The infotainment system is designed to seamlessly juggle between music, GPS and Bluetooth.

Check it out.

I love Yvo Schaap, even though I’ve never met him in person.

Wanna know why? Because the man keeps on digging up interesting stuff by simply perusing code, and then alerting us.

Schaap found the embeddable +1 button and a a link to the Google Games logo before either of them was publicly released, and now he may have identified several companies that will be partnering with Facebook for the imminent launch of the latter’s Music service (which may be called Vibes).

Schaap took a good look at the major music streaming services of this world, and found interesting references in the HTML code of some of them. Several popular music streaming service providers, namely Spotify, Rdio, MOG, SoundCloud, Deezer and Rhapsody, show meta data in a so far undocumented format on their track, album and artists pages.

Audio bridges? Sign me up right now!

MOG, Spotify and Rdio have of course already been widely reported as launch partners for ‘Facebook Music’, but notably, Deezer, SoundCloud and Rhapsody are new names.

Schaap also took a look at the likes of Turntable.fm, Grooveshark, Last.fm, Pandora and Napster but didn’t dig up anything interesting on their respective websites (at least, not yet).

Stay tuned for announcements at f8, Facebook’s annual developers’ conference, which will take place on September 22.

Also read:

Two Key Features Of Facebook Music: Scrobbling And Track Unification

No Facebook Music Yet? No Problem! Meet The Wonderful +Music Chrome Extension

Facebook Director Of Platform: Spotify *Is* Facebook Music

Yesterday, we outlined a bit of what we’ve heard about Facebook’s upcoming f8 conference. One big launch will be their official foray into music. Today, we’ve heard more about that launch.

One thing we’ve heard from a very good source is that a key aspect of the service will be “scrobbling”. The term, made popular by Last.fm, means that when you listen to a song, it gets sent to your profile without you have to do anything. I assume there will be a way to turn this off, or a way for you to selectively share songs, but this is a key to the service.

Not that a post-music-to-profile feature should be surprising. Facebook’s core feature is the feed, and music will now make it even more robust. In fact, depending on how popular Facebook Music is, it could end up being one of the biggest sources of feed content.

And I think it will be pretty popular based on the second bit of information we’ve heard. Facebook Music will also apparently offer content resolution between all the different music partners involved. This means that if you’re listening to Rdio and a track goes up on your profile, a MOG user can click on the track and still hear the exact same song in full. Essentially, you’ll only need to sign up for one of the major music services Facebook is launching with to be able to access most content (there undoubtedly will be some songs available on one service but not another, so it probably won’t be fully seamless, but I assume you’ll be able to hear previews regardless).

This content resolution will likely be the most important aspect of Facebook Music. It turns Facebook into the great social music unifier. You can share songs without having to worry if your friends will be able to hear it or not based on what streaming service they use.

It’s not clear what partners Facebook has gotten to agree to this unification beyond Rdio, MOG, and Spotify. It’s certainly possible that while other services will be a part of Facebook Music, those three will be the key ones.

In terms of functionality, we’ve also heard that there will be a standard player that plays music without interruption from page to page as you browse Facebook. Om Malik previously reported on the persistent controls as well as a larger Music Dashboard area. Malik stated that the player would be at the bottom of Facebook, but we’ve heard that Facebook has been testing variations on this player, so it’s not yet clear where it will reside (top, bottom, etc).

Update: Inside Facebook’s Josh Constine has an interesting thought: what if the desktop software team at Facebook was working on a scrobbler that could also work with iTunes to import listens? Those tracks could then by matched and played via Spotify, MOG, Rdio, etc, on Facebook Music itself. Constine notes that he doesn’t have any inside information on this, but he did outline that possibility following our post from May on Facebook’s Seattle-based desktop software team.

Even if that isn’t a part of the initial roll-out, this makes a lot of sense down the road for Facebook Music. Or what about a Last.fm partnership for the service? And what would Apple think of all this?

MOG, the all-you-can-eat streaming music service that competes with the likes of Spotify and Rdio, has some good news for Mac users: it’s just launched a native application for OS X, which is now available on the Mac App Store. You can download it right here (the service is free for 14 days, then costs $10/month, which includes access to the web and mobile applications as well).

The native Mac application will look familiar to anyone who has used the service’s recently-revamped HTML5 web app , because it’s based on the same code. It isn’t loaded with native Mac widgets, but it works well — everything feels snappy, and in my testing songs began playing in less than a second.

And there is one nifty feature that the web app doesn’t have: AirPlay support, which means you can stream your MOG music to an Apple TV or any speakers hooked up to an Airport Express (MOG says this is the first of the streaming music apps to offer this feature). The app also supports those media keys on your keyboard, as well as Apple Remotes.

Existing MOG users will be pleased with the app, but this release is particularly important for users debating between Spotify, Rdio, MOG, and Rhapsody. Each of these services offers large music libraries — so they tend to compete on offering better app support and user experiences.  Spotify and Rdio already offer native apps; now MOG can check that box as well.

Spotify does has one advantage over MOG and Rdio for the time being: it has a limited free version, though it’s invitation-only in the US.

It’s getting fun. And today, MOG is making the race all that much closer.

The service has just rolled out a new Beta player to users that streamlines the MOG experience, putting a much heavier emphasis on building out playlists and recommendations than its predecessor did.

Up until now, MOG users have been using a Flash-based player that appeared in a popup — you navigate the site in your main browser pane, adding songs as you go, and those songs are added to your playlist, which you control in the smaller popup window. It works fine, but compared to services that have adopted a more iTunes-like interface, it can be a little confusing.

The new player fixes that. It’ll look familiar to anyone who has used the MOG web app on the Chrome Web Store, which launched in December (it’s a variation on that player). But it includes some key additions, and it’s also rolling out as a beta option to all MOG users (previously the only way to access it was through the Chrome store, which many people don’t know about).

The new player actually has fewer features than the old one — it’s missing ratings and the ability to see the profiles of other users, for example. But, aside from a more intuitive and faster HTML5 interface, it adds features that are probably even more important: namely, recommendations and better playlist creation.

Now when you log into the new version of MOG, the service will look at your Facebook Likes (and the Likes of your friends) to start recommending artists immediately. I logged in with a test account populated with some of my favorite bands, and sure enough, the service immediately presented me with albums by The Darkness and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

MOG CEO David Hyman says that the team actually had some help from Facebook when it came to integrating this functionality. Hyman wouldn’t say anything about the rumored Facebook Music initiative that’s in the works, other than to say that he “hopes to do more great stuff with them in the future”.

MOG and other all-you-can-eat music services are increasingly competing on features like speed, recommendations and social sharing than they are on the size of their libraries. MOG already offers solid mobile applications, and this update makes the desktop experience significantly more compelling, especially for new users who are now met with a personalized homepage rather than a generic list of popular music.

The service is available now and costs $9.99 for the “primo” streaming subscription.

Hyman’s MOG is one of the most interesting and important contemporary start-ups. Like Pandora and Spotify, MOG is pioneering a cloud based streaming service for accessing our music. So will MOG succeed? As Hyman told me, “it’s all about timing and I think our timing is good.”

He may well be right. Whether it’s MOG, Pandora or Spotify or some future Apple or Google streaming service, the music revolution will, I think, be streamed. And as Hyman told me, the ultimate success of this model depends on convincing consumers that they should ascend from the free to paid model. I hope Hyman is correct. There have been too many false dawns in the digital music business and its essential now for the industry to figure out a viable model that will both guarantee revenue and please consumers.

This is the concluding set of interviews from SFMusicTech. Please also check out my interviews with Brandon Boyd and of Mike Einziger of Incubus, Jonathan Carroll of Gowalla, Richard Conlon of BMI, and on the “new intimacy” in the industry.

Hyman on the history of digital music

Hyman on MOG

Hyman on the future of music

Thanks again to Jeff LaPenna and Zachary Ryan at BAMM.tv for providing the cameras, lighting and production assistance.

Today, Mini announced that a new streaming audio app from MOG has been approved to make its way to their Mini Connected system. Mini Connected is an in-car entertainment system that is fully integrated with the iPhone. A Mini Connected app is run on iOS outputting metadata to the center screen where the data is rebuilt on Mini’s interface.

It’s a pretty unique way to power the IP stack, and in my opinion better than any other automaker’s attempt. Mini has said that over time they will announce more approved apps for their system. (They need to be approved so there’s nothing to distract the driver — don’t expect to see Angry Birds.)

Features from MOG include on-demand streaming of unlimited, ad-free listening, control from existing Mini joystick and steering wheel controls and local iPhone storage for use when no data connection is available. Also, MOG has their patent-pending “MOG Mobius” music discovery engine, which enables users to switch between true “artist only” radio or a full mix of similar artists.

MOG happens to download their music at 320kbps, which is the highest for any other on-demand streaming audio app.

Press Release

Are you a MOG user in proud possession of a Sonos Multi-Room Music System? Let me make you a happy man or woman: US-based MOG users will have access to the company’s on-demand music service through Sonos later this spring, the companies jointly announced this morning.

With the addition of MOG, and recently Rdio and Spotify, the list of available music services is beginning to look like a very appealing offer for most anyone (the list also includes Last.fm, Napster, Pandora, Rhapsody, SiriusXM, among others).

MOG will offer Sonos customers high-quality sound, streamed at 320kbps, on-demand and ad-free, as well as its patent-pending “MOG Mobius” music discovery engine, which enables users to switch between “artist-only” radio stations or a full mix of similar artists.

The company says it will offer a 14-day free trial to all new and existing Sonos customers after which users can sign up for its $9.99-per-month ‘Primo’ subscription plan.

We created subscriptions for publishing apps, not SaaS apps.

—email attributed to Steve Jobs

There’s been so much confusion in the wake of Apple’s new subscription billing policy for apps that Steve Jobs felt the need to issue the proclamation above via his preferred method, a personal email. (It’s his version of the burning bush). While Apple’s new policy clearly states that all subscriptions for purchasing “content, functionality, or services in an app” must go through Apple, Jobs suggests that Apple will make a distinction between “publishing apps” and “SaaS apps” (software as a service). Apps like Salesforce or Evernote, for example, operate under an SaaS subscription, and are available to the same subscribers on the Web and other devices besides the iPhone.

Apple appears to be backtracking here. As I suggested on Friday in a Fly or Die video with Rhapsody’s president Jon irwin (who offers a music streaming subscription app on the iPhone), Apple’s initial broad-stroke rule may very well have been a trial balloon. The subscription billing system was obviously designed with media apps in mind, particularly publications. Maybe Apple won’t apply it to other types of subscription apps. Indeed, this latest email from Jobs appears to signal that Apple is adjusting to the market reaction.

The stakes here are very high. Apple cannot afford to alienate the mass of developers with existing or future subscription apps. As Instapaper founder Marco Arment writes:

A broad, vague, inconsistently applied, greedy, and unjustifiable rule doesn’t make developers want to embrace the platform.

The line now seems to be drawn between publishing apps and other kinds of subscription apps that are more like software. For the most part, that does make things clearer. Salesforce probably doesn’t have to worry about pulling its app from the iPhone.

But the next question is: What exactly isa publishing app? Obviously, apps that look like traditional print publications like The Daily, magazine apps, or the New York Times app once it goes to a subscription model all fall under the new rule. So too do apps like the recently-rejected Readability, which serves up repurposed content from across the Web without ads for a subscription. By that logic, any news reader apps that charge a subscription would fall under that rule as well.

But what is a news publishing app? They are clearly news-reading software. And what if Twitter or a Twitter client started charging subscriptions? Are those publishing apps or a communications apps? Just think about Flipboard or Pulse, which transform Twitter and other feeds into a dynamic, realtime, personalized publication. If those apps started charging subscriptions (both are currently free), I bet they would have to go through Apple’s subscription system just like Readability.

Okay, so any app that involves reading the news is a publishing app. Maybe. What about other media apps like music (Rhapsody, Rdio, MOG) or movies (Netflix) which require a subscription? Rhapsody doesn’t “publish” music, it just streams it. Netflix doesn’t make movies, it just delivers them. Apple still hasn’t clarified how it will treat these types of media subscription apps. But in my mind those are not publishing apps and thus should not be subject to the new rules.

Finally, what about personal publishing apps delivered as a service? One example of a popular app that offers both free and subscription versions is Evernote, which could be considered a form of personal publishing. Evernote lets you publish photos, notes, Web clips and other digital detritus to your own personal stream, which can remain private or be shared. It charges a subscription for extra features such as supporting larger uploads, more file types, and better collaboration tools. Those are all software features, but the end result is a personal publication of sorts. The difference is that Evernote isn’t charging for the content, it is charging for the software features.

And maybe that is the line Jobs is drawing, but it is a line that won’t last long. The most successful publishing apps will look increasingly like other apps, with software features that take them beyond glorified PDF readers. Smart publishers might even start charging subscription fees to unlock those extra features—3D photos, social news filters, augmented reality layers—instead of for the content itself.

Today the company has announced that it’s landed a deal with Verizon, and it’s a big one: MOG will come preinstalled on all 4G Verizon Android phones. MOG will also be featured in Verizon’s V CAST app store, and users will be able to sign up for MOG accounts using Verizon carrier billing.

This is a big win for MOG, which has the challenge of convincing people to pay for a subscription music service (no easy feat) and is up against some strong competitors like Rdio and Spotify (if it ever launches in the US). The exposure to millions of Verizon users will be nice, and I suspect that many people are going to be eager to ‘test’ their 4G connections as soon as they get their hands on a phone that supports it — mass downloading of albums sounds like a good place to start. And carrier billing is key too, as users won’t have to pull out their credit cards.

Verizon will almost certainly be taking a chunk of MOG’s revenues for users that sign up via the preinstalled app, but in the long term this may prove worth it. At this point we’re in a sort of landgrab for streaming music service customers — each service will eventually have very similar libraries (they already do in most cases), and users may well stick with the same provider for years.

Sorry international users, MOG is US only. But so is Verizon.

Dalton Caldwell, founder/ex-CEO of imeem, recently gave a presentation at the Y Combinator Startup School on the impossibility of creating success in digital music. I’d like to provide an alternate point of view and make it clear that, like in any business, “making it” requires know-how, hard work, diligence and passion. Having significantly contributed to the successes of four companies that have guided themselves through the muck including Addicted to Noise, Sonicnet, Gracenote, and now MOG, my perspective is quite opposite from that of Dalton’s and I see great opportunity for those playing in the space.

Dalton’s takeaway from his experience appears to be that the entire music market can’t work, perhaps because imeem did not work. Yes, digital music seems to be a game that every 20-something wants to try and play, and it’s almost as if creating a digital music product is a rite of passage for millions of young buck programmers. It’s unfortunate that because it’s a sexy space, and because there are tons of entrants into the field, all of the noise creates an impression that winning can’t be done. It certainly can.

Like being a paid musician, an actor, a rocket scientist, or a media mogul, success and whatever you do requires years of commitment and unbridled passion. For those that put in Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours, the rewards can be significant. Rewards realized by countless success stories: from Winamp and Spinner, to Last.fm, Pandora, Gracenote, iTunes, MySpace, Facebook, Tumblr and all the popular blogging platforms, YouTube, VEVO, ringtone companies, lyrics sites, music-oriented games (Guitar Hero, Tap Tap Revenge, etc.) and many, many more.

To Dalton’s point, providing music content is a smaller-margin business. But, the addressable market is massive. Music consumption is at an all-time high and is most likely the second biggest leisure activity in the world behind watching television. It’s an industry in massive flux. Those with models that work can reap massive rewards through its tumultuous evolution. There are countless phenomenal businesses built on providing services and products on a massive scale with a small margin.

It’s hard work getting deals done with the labels. They have limited business development resources and can’t make thousands of bets. Contrary to what Dalton conveyed, the labels don’t require you to do deals that make no economic sense. For example, MOG is very happy with the realistic minimum guarantees that were set, all of which we’ve hit. You have to come to the labels with a great idea, a great product and a model that works.

MOG started out providing tools to music bloggers. We successfully morphed that into the fastest growing music network, providing ad sale resources to over 1,300 blogs and music sites, reaching over 35 million monthly uniques (see comScore). We are a fast-growing, solid business. We recently launched a cloud-based online and mobile music subscription service, heralded by press and users.  It’s a low margin business, yes, partially offset with improved margins from our ad business, but a great business on its own.  Our model does not have unknown variable costs. We have built a team that can execute with great cost efficiencies, and are prepared to take our business globally.

Historically, subscription businesses were hindered by lack of ubiquitous access. But mark my words, with open-platform smart phones, 3G (and soon LTE), digital services quickly coming to television (wait until you see all the TVs coming with MOG inside), and most importantly, IP-based services in the car — often tied to established billing relationships consumers already have with carriers and others — it’s the future of music (along with free radio).

As for Congress getting involved with statutory rates, it’s my opinion that these rates and not letting the free market dictate how this area evolves will be the death of the music industry. Can you imagine, Congress coming up with how much a label (and ultimately an artist) can make by placing caps on the industry? I assure you that would be the industry’s quickest decline, as it would become impossible for labels to make bets on new talent.

It’s a massive global market and there will be a handful or more of players. Dalton says to stay out because it’s saturated. People told us to stay out for the same reason. But, we believed in our core we could build a better mousetrap and we did. And who knows, perhaps so could you! It’s a damn big market coming. It won’t happen overnight. But it’s inevitably coming.

So, to those of you who love music, and can’t think of spending your life doing anything else, diligence, unbridled passion, commitment, and common sense can not only provide a lifetime tied to music, but a healthy reward. Like my father always said to me, “You don’t get something for nuthin’, kid.”

After months of waiting, it’s finally here. Streaming music service MOG has launched its mobile applications for Android and iPhone, giving subscribers unlimited access to its library of 8 million songs, which can be streamed or downloaded over both 3G and WiFi. If you listen to a lot of music, or just like being able to listen to music on-demand without having to sync to your PC, this is definitely worth checking out. Access to the mobile service costs $9.99 a month, but MOG is offering free 3-day trials when you download the apps (no credit card is required).

When MOG launched its All Access music service back in December, we gave it a rave review, but it was missing one key feature: mobile. These applications bring all of the functionality of the desktop service and they do it one better, by allowing you to store as many songs and albums as you’d like to your phone’s storage for offline access.

Navigating the application should come naturally to anyone who has used the iPhone’s music player (and it’s actually a big step up over the music player that comes stock on Android). After first firing up the app, the first feature you’ll want to try is search. You’ll find the regular options here, like searching by artist and song, but there’s also an option for Playlists, which allow you to search through user-curated playlists created by MOG’s large community of music fans. This is part of a recurring theme in the application: discovery, which is important if you’re keen on tapping into the service’s broad music library. The main navigation screen also includes a list of New Releases, top songs and albums across the service, and a collection of songs handpicked by MOG’s editors on a daily basis.

MOG really shines when it comes to actually getting the music you want to hear onto your phone. When you find a song or album you like, you have two options: you can stream it (just tap the song or album title), or you can download it and store it locally. Next to each song and album is an arrow pointing downward; hit that, and MOG will start downloading the files the background (it’s really nice to be able to download an entire album or playlist in one tap).

There isn’t any restriction on how much music you can download, other than the amount of storage you have available on your phone. By default downloads clock in at 64 kbps AAC+, but you can elect to download files at a much higher quality 320 kbps MP3 bitrate if you’d like (this obviously takes up more space).

You can also use MOG mobile to create custom digital radio stations, sort of like Pandora, but without the learning algorithms. Input a seed artist or song titles, and MOG will start playing similar music. Using a sliding scale, you can tell MOG to play only music by that artist, or you can increase the amount of variety you want to introduce into the station.

The applications have been a long time coming. MOG showed them off at SXSW in March, only to have its iPhone application sit in App Store limbo waiting for Apple’s approval for a month. Now that they’re out, you can expect MOG to push them hard, with help from the new $9.5 million funding round it raised earlier this year. Note that this release doesn’t include support for iOS 4′s multitasking; MOG says that it will be coming in the next two weeks in an update.

Of course, MOG isn’t alone in this space. The service will be competing against the likes of Rhapsody, and more competitors like Rdio and Spotify are on the horizon (the latter two have received plenty of press, but are not yet available in the US). Also note that MOG offers a version of its service that omits mobile access for $5 a month. Update: As the commenters point out, US users can request an invite code to Rdio from its site, but it’s still in private beta.

Roku makes an inexpensive set-top box for streaming media to your TV; this marks the first hardware integration for MOG. The service is included as part of MOG’s existing premium plan, which runs $4.99 a month and lets you stream as much music as you’d like from the site (and now, your Roku box). MOG CEO David Hyman says that this is the first on-demand music service that’s on Roku, noting that Pandora’s Internet Radio is available as well (Pandora doesn’t let you choose what song you want to listen to).

MOG’s iPhone app, which we got a preview of in March, lets you download an entire album to your phone in one tap (it looks quite nice). It also includes a radio feature that lets you stream songs that sound similar to a few seed artists or songs, as you would with Pandora. Apple’s approval of the application has to have the company and investors)breathing a sigh of relief — a big part of MOG’s premium strategy involves its mobile applications, and for a while it was looking like Apple might block it because it stands to compete with its own upcoming cloud-based music service.

All-you-can-eat access to MOG’s mobile applications will cost $9.99, which includes access to the aforementioned web and Roku service. Hyman says that we can likely expect the iPhone application in July, and that it will launch alongside an Android app.

MOG has a lot riding on its mobile applications — it just closed a new $9.5 million funding round, some of which is going toward expanding its mobile platform. At SXSW it held a press event to preview its iPhone and Android applications, and what it showcased was pretty impressive. For $10 a month, users can stream any song or album they want, and they can locally download entire albums to their phone (which will work even when they lose connectivity) in one tap.

It’s possible that Apple is concerned that MOG’s app is too good. If you listen (and pay for) a lot of music, MOG’s all-you-can-eat service can quickly pay for itself. And it makes tethering your iPhone to your PC every time you want to sync songs a thing of the past. Apple has long been been rumored to be working on its own cloud music service, especially since it acquired Lala last December, and may be worried about getting beaten to the punch. Thing is, Apple has already approved Rhapsody, which offers much of the same music streaming functionality (albeit without the full-album download button) and Spotify.

On the other hand, Apple may just be overwhelmed — it has the release of the iPhone 4 and iOS 4 just around the corner, and now has to deal with developers who are upgrading their apps in time for the new OS launch.

We’ll be keeping an eye on this to see how it develops.

According to Quantcast, the MOG Music Network, which includes thousands of music blogs written by the MOG community, has grown to 13.2M monthly uniques in the United Sates and 23.7M worldwide. To show how that compares with its competitors, MOG plotted the comScore numbers of other popular music services including MTV Networks Online, Vevo, and MySpace Music versus its own Quantcast stats. It’s not usually a good idea to mix data sources, but MOG says that Quantcast is actually undercounting MOG’s growth relative to comScore, because it doesn’t count ‘duped’ uniques across its network.

Note that the Y-axis in this graph is different for MOG — it isn’t nearly as large as most of these competitors yet, but it is growing faster than them. MOG also says that if you combine all the ‘repeat’ comScore properties (in other words, count sites like AOL Prop Brand Music, AOL Network Music, and AOL Music as the same), MOG is up to the 9th largest music portal overall, behind Yahoo’s music properties.

To be fair, in some ways this really isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison. The MOG Music Network includes thousands of music blogs, while many of the competitors listed in the graph are focused primarily around listening to music. Most of them have some editorial content too, but not to the extent of MOG’s army of bloggers. Still, comScore puts them all into the same bucket of music sites, and advertisers may not care too much about the differences.

Hyman kicked off the talk with some background information. MOG Music Network, the editorial-based site hosted at MOG.com, reaches 16 million unique visitors a month. In December, the company launched Mog All Access, its streaming music service that costs $5/month for all-you-can-eat streaming music. The company is getting 17% conversion from its 3 day free trial (which is high). MOG, Hyman says, is a music service people will actually pay for. But the key will be portability.

MOG’s mobile applications for Android and iPhone will launch in Q2, featuring on-demand streams, downloads, MOG Radio, your library and playlists, High Quality audio, and a $10/month price tag (which includes both mobile and the web version of the service).

First, MOG showcased its Android application. As with the desktop version of MOG, users can stream any song on demand (they can also edit their playlists and upcoming song queue). Along with playlists and individual songs, users can also tap into MOG Radio, which generates a playlist of songs based on one of your favorite artists, albums, or songs (it’s a bit like Pandora, but you can dynamically adjust the content of your station using a slider and can jump to new songs as many times as you’d like). One other very slick feature: on Android, the service will feature voice commands, so you can simply say the name of the artist you’re looking for.

Next, MOG showed off the company’s iPhone application. In general, MOG is looking to keep the interfaces of the iPhone and Android applications consistent.  From a feature perspective, the iPhone and Android applications are identical (save for the Android voice search), and the applications are being developed side by side.

Offline Playback

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. Hyman says that other offline services that have caching just cache your playlists — MOG lets you select any playlist or album on the site and immediately begin downloading it. Mobile web streaming and downloads will default t0 64kb AAC+ but users have the option to download 320kb/s files (which would obviously take much longer.  Streaming and downloading works over Wi-Fi, 3G, and EDGE.

Regarding whether or not MOG was worried Apple would turn down the application, Hyman said that historically Apple has allowed other subscription-based applications that feature local caching (he alluded to Spotify, which was previously accepted by Apple). But as always, nothing is certain with the App Store.

MOG will be facing off with plenty of competitors. Last fall, Spotify released applications for both iPhone and Android, but the service still isn’t available stateside. Pandora has become very popular on mobile devices, but it doesn’t let you play any song you’d like on demand (it’s free, so plenty of people are willing to overlook that). From a feature perspective, Rhapsody is most similar to MOG (especially once it gets offline playback for its iPhone application, which is coming soon), but it’s $15 a month compared to MOG’s $10.