Access unlimited music from anywhere! (not free, but well worth it!)

Up until a few days ago I'd never tried an online subscription-based music service, mostly because I couldn't conceive that it would be worth $10 a month (which is the typical price for these kinds of services). However, the other day my friend Al turned me on to a service called MOG.com. 

I signed up for the 14 day free trial and then downloaded the free iPhone app. MOG allows you to listen to music on your computer using a web browser, or on your iPhone via the MOG app (it also works with the ROKU TV box). Intuitively, I realized it would be very nice to be able to have access to almost any song in existence. However, experiencing this directly almost brought me to my knees with joy.

Ideally, I would like to have a music service that offers the following: (1) access to the widest possible selection of music; (2) the ability to discover new music easily based on music that I already know; and (3) the ability to access this music from virtually anywhere, at any time. The MOG music service provides this in spades.

MOG gives me access to all the artists that already exist in my purchased library of music, in addition to significantly more artists. MOG says that they have 8 million tracks available, but the number seems limitless to me. What really sets MOG apart is the ability to discover new music easily. Obviously, since I'm paying a flat monthly fee I'm encouraged to listen to as much music as possible.

MOG makes it easy to discover new music in a couple of different ways. First, the search function works exactly the way that Google does; that is, you can simply type in the name of an artist, song or album (or any combination) and find what you're looking for very quickly. For example, if you type in “stones waiting” you'll quickly find a link to the Rolling Stones song entitled Waiting On A Friend.

MOG also has a unique tool called MOG radio, which is fundamentally just a dedicated playlist that only play songs by a particular artist. But, what makes this even more interesting, is that you can use a special slider that lets you populate the playlist with other artists who sound like the focal artist. In other words, if I listen to Steely Dan radio I can adjust the slider so that an increasing mix of other artists who sound like Steely Dan are included in my playlist.

This is a great way to find new music based on music that you're already familiar with. This features is available in the web browser version, and in the iPhone app.

I was curious about the iPhone app (MOG also works with Android phones), wondering whether it would work well when I wasn't in a Wi-Fi hotspot. It works great at home, without any fault whatsoever. But that's because my house is blanketed with Wi-Fi. So I took the iPhone app for a spin in my car to see if it would drop out when I was using only the 3G service. I drove around New Orleans for about an hour doing various errands and not once did I lose my connection to the MOG service. Incidentally, the iPhone app works perfectly with Apple headphones; that is, you can pause the music by clicking once or advance to the next song by double clicking quickly.

Because MOG is so reliable, and because it is available to me pretty much anywhere I go, I have decided that this is a service I'm willing to keep paying for. After all, I probably spend at least $10 a month to buy music. If I can have all the music I would ever want available to me anywhere, why would I even want to own it? Of course, you are allowed to download music if you like so that you have it permanently on your computer hard drive or iPhone. I have downloaded a few songs just to see how this works, but the reality is I don't care about the music on my iPhone unless (for some reason) I can't access the Internet.

MOG allows you to create playlists if you like, and those playlists are available to you from any device that you log into on. I haven't spent much time creating playlists, and probably won't do that until I get more used to using the service. My friend Al expressed dismay that he had used a service called Lala where he built up a bunch of playlists, only to lose them all when Apple took over the company and shut it down. I doubt that will happen with MOG. Still, I'll wait a while before I invest time creating playlists.

In case you're wondering, you can only login from one device at a time. So, if your computer is logged into MOG when you login with your iPhone app it will log you out of the computer version. The service costs $9.99 per month but that's only if you want to use the iPhone app as well as the computer browser. If you want to log in from just your computer then it only costs $4.99 per month. That's a pretty good deal!

If you want more information about MOG click on this link. I'd check out the 14 day free trial and see if it works for you. You might be surprised like I was.