One of the many reasons I like Spotify and MOG so much are that they present a legal alternative to piracy. Why bother to spend time seeking out and illegally downloading files of varying origin and quality when, for a monthly fee that’s less than the price of one beer at a bar, you can find anything you want in good quality in a matter of seconds, do it legally, and do so in a manner in which the artists actually get paid? Sure, I lauded the pulldown of Megaupload because those fuckers earned $110 million in ad revenue on the backs of pirated content, but only one mole has been whacked and the piracy problem still looms large: Spotify is a solution.

But so far it’s been hard for content owners to claim that Spotify is a legitimate source of revenue; until now.

Click to read more…

Read this quote from Stu Pflaum, co-founder (with famous rapper Talib Kweli) of independent hip-hop label Element 9 [via the 10/25 Lefsetz Letter]:

Since [Talib Kweli's] release went live on Spotify we’ve streamed the album over 70K times. I know what skeptics will say; our revenue from those streams is about $7. Who cares? Our web traffic has more than tripled in terms of site visitors & discussion… we’re getting real-time feedback from listeners on which tracks they favor and are able to adjust our marketing accordingly with most of our budget still intact. The group & the album have a legitimate buzz now.

Totally nails it. It’s not about the dollars and cents, but everything else that comes along with Spotify that makes it such a great tool for artists, and for their labels too. This benefit is hard to measure in dollars, but as it turns out is the case with the Spotify/Facebook integration the value can now be approximated — and it’s staggering! So what’s behind Sumerian’s decision to leave?

Click to read more…

It’s a big week for streaming music services; while yesterday we were able to confirm that Spotify will indeed be launching in the U.S. this week, today we have some news about a similar service that already exists, MOG.  MOG, like Spotify, offers users the ability to stream any song at any time for a subscription fee of $5/month, or $10/month if you want to use your mobile devices too. I’ve tested their music library extensively, and they definitely have all the music any metalhead could ever want. We’ve championed MOG on MS before; in the interest of full disclosure, MOG sometimes partners with MetalSucks through the latter’s advertising arm, although MOG is not paying MS for this post or any others (MetalSucks does not endorse such sketchy behavior!).

The new MOG player offers a much cleaner interface and utilizes speedy HTML5 coding that makes the old flash player seem like a horse and buggy. The new player also supposedly features a recommendation engine that utilizes both past MOG plays and your Facebook “Likes” to suggest new music for you, but I can’t seem to get it to work (although this guy did). I’ve never been big on recommendation engines, though; I know what I want to hear. So what’s important is that the new player is easy to use, fast, sounds fantastic and is only 5 friggin’ bucks a month for unlimited music!!!

Sign up for a MOG trial here and give it a spin for free for 14 days. If you don’t like it, just cancel… but I honestly can’t see why anyone wouldn’t like this. We live in the future.

-VN

Spotify, the “in the cloud” all-you-can-eat streaming music service that’s wildly popular in Europe, has once again been thwarted in its attempt to break into the U.S. market. The issue, once again, is an inability to get the stubborn “Big Four” record label groups (other than Sony) to get their heads out of their collective asses and realize the power and reach of these services.

But with all the coverage Spotify continues to get in the mainstream media, how come no one is talking about MOG?? MOG’s service is competitive with Spotify’s. It offers unlimited streaming of an insanely wide variety of music (yes, plenty of metal, even the obscure stuff). No ownership of files on your hard drive is required; everything is streaming, and yes, the sound quality is good. The service also works on many mobile phone platforms and allows for a certain number of temporary downloads to those devices so you can listen even if you don’t have an Internet connection. MOG even one-ups Spotify by offering a variety of other features such as a recommendation engine similar to Pandora’s that allows users to create custom “radio stations” based on artists. Better yet, MOG is still offering a free 15-day trial of their service so you’ve got nothing to lose by trying it out. You’ll be happy you did — trust me, it’s that good. And get used to this, because it WILL be the way we all consume music in the not-too-distant future.

-VN

Full disclosure: MOG’s advertising arm sometimes purchases ads on MetalSucks. The ads are in no way related to this article.

Since the day we started this site I’ve been arguing that the sale and ownership of recorded music is on its way out and that all-encompassing streaming services “in the cloud” for a low monthly fee are the future of music listening. While the CD hasn’t become extinct as quickly as I’d thought it would, and though ownership of digital files is definitely here to stay for the time being, the real future is already here in the form of a few such streaming services that are available right now. The most talked about is Spotify, whose iTunes-like interface and vast catalogue has made it a huge hit in Europe, the only place it’s currently available. But there’s another service called MOG that’s available right now here in the U.S. that offers pretty much everything you’d want in a streaming service: a vast catalogue and a great interface for desktop and mobile listening, available for less than $10/month. And you can sign up for a free 15-day trial right now.

Most importantly, MOG’s got an incredible selection of metal; I just performed searches for a handful of metal bands on a variety of record labels (Century, Relapse, Earache, Willowtip, Prosthetic, Metal Blade) and found them all. You can either listen to single songs, full albums, or an artist-based “radio stations” that functions like Pandora by using sonic metrics and user analysis to suggests similar artists you may like. You can even adjust a slider between “Artist Only” on one end and “Similar Artists” on the other to vary how much new stuff you’d like to hear. You can also create custom playlists for yourself and others to enjoy.

The best part: this only costs $10/month!! Unlimited streaming metal on-demand for $10/month. What the fuck??? It’s kind of unbelievable.

Click to read more…

A less forward-thinking company might shirk at the prospect of an unlimited music streaming service, especially one whose music business is rooted so firmly in pay-per-track iTunes and the iPods/iPhones that carry said tracks. If Apple were as thick-headed and dense as the major record labels, they’d forge ahead with their existing models while attempting to sue the newcomers into oblivion. But Apple is not that company. Apple is smart, aware and aggressive, and as such they’ve recently purchased music streaming site LaLa, a move that seems to indicate the company will soon be pursuing a subscription-based model.

And if Apple is going to make a play at a subscription streaming model, then the holy grail of music experiences — the ability to stream any song, at any time, from anywhere (aka “the cloud”) — is that much closer to becoming reality.

Click to read more…

Metal Insider tells us that brand new music streaming service MOG went live yesterday morning. MOG promises a deep library at a $5 monthly fee, and boasts a service “better than Rhapsody, iTunes and Pandora…combined.” [Full disclosure: MOG's advertising arm sells some ad space on this site.] With all four major labels signed on (those being Warner, EMI, Sony and Universal), a $5/month unlimited streaming service is a tantalizing proposition indeed. But the million dollar question on our minds (and undoubtedly yours as well) is: do they have metal?

Without having tested the service yet I’m inclined to say that, surprisingly, the answer is actually “yes.” Century Media, Nuclear Blast, Earache, Willowtip and a few other metal labels are distributed digitally through EMI, so those ought to be covered. Warner holds a majority stake in Roadrunner so that oughtta be a no-brainer. Relapse, Metal Blade and Victory releases are distributed by Red, which is owned by Sony. Those are all the labels at the proverbial metal big kids table right there. Obviously there are plenty of other smaller metal labels, but I’m guessing most of them also have major distribution.

This new MOG service is interesting indeed. If anyone here has tested it out, please let us know in the comments how it fares metal-wise. How does it stack up against the much simpler, sleeker Spotify? Watch a brief description of some of the service’s key features in the video below.

-VN