I have been using MOG for a little over a year, and really liked the service. I paid the $10 per month premium fee that allowed me to download as much music as my iPhone could hold and then play it back whenever I wanted, even without an Internet connection. From a financial standpoint, it just made more sense for me to drop $10 per month and get access to hundreds of albums as opposed to buying a single album at $10 or single tracks at $1.99 from iTunes. It's just a better way to explore new music.
Then I noticed that I was the only one on MOG. Many of my fellow employees and friends are on Spotify and had no idea that there was another streaming service out there similar to the market leader. So being a music industry professional I decided to switch over to Spotify and analyze the differences between the two. And here is what I've got so far.
The Similarities:
Both MOG and Spotify have the same amount of music, or fairly close. This is because many artists, labels, and managers use online aggregators to get their music to the market. So, if an album is on MOG, chances are it's on Spotify and vice versa.
They both have multiple tiered account options and are identical in price. In the MOG world you can pay $4.99 per month for unlimited music streaming from your computer and customized radio stations. For $9.99 per month you get all those options plus the ability to download music to your mobile devices to enjoy offline. And when you are on Spotify the options are the same and so are the monthly fees. From a business standpoint there are no competitive differentiations here.
Both services have radio features, customizable playlists, and Facebook integration.
The Differences (and they're not that huge):
MOG has a sexier user interface, especially on their mobile versions. They use less text and more icons to separate user options.
Spotify integrates your playlists across various platforms. As a MOG user, I always hated that my playlist on my computer didn't show up on my iPhone and my iPad. With Spotify, I was psyched to see my playlists update on all devices seamlessly.
MOG has a more customizable radio feature. With MOG you select the artist you want and then click on their "radio" button, from there you move a slider to select only that artist, similar artists, or varying mixes of both. This is much more fun than Spotify, who has you listen to songs and give them a thumbs up or down to customize the playlists.
This is what I have witnessed thus far. I will continue to use Spotify for now and document the differences between the two services. Right now I am leaning towards Spotify. Even though MOG has a sexier user interface, sharing playlists between devices is huge for me.
Interesting. My playlists automatically sync between different devices, the queue does not, but I don't use that anyway so no problem.
ReplyDeleteI was a huge MOG lover too...Until I got tired of the buggy iPhone app that kept crashing when I wanted to delete a track. Another huge thing i was tired of was the buggy web experience...it worked good on some browsers and down right crappy on others. Not having the option to add songs to your mobile device from the web is getting old too. Adding and changing things in Spotify works very nice.
ReplyDeleteMOG recently came out with Genre radio play...isn't this what MOG radio already does when you choose to play an artist and similar ones?
I'm leaning more towards Spotify too....I'm tired of buggy Apps.
I've also been using MOG for about a year now and it works perfectly... On my iPhone... most of the time.
ReplyDeleteThe webX is horrificccc!!!! Skippin' like a cd every time I press play. It doesn't seem to differ from the website and the web app; same shit!
In short, I cancelled my subscription the other day and I'm going to check out Spotify for a month.
Until they get their shit together, I'm done with Mog.
MOG plays at 320Kbps mp3 stream. So, if your internet connection is crappy, music from MOG will skip and hop like kangaroo.
DeleteI currently have MOG. Here's one thing that's a REALLY important difference between Spotify and MOG. MOG allows you to download unlimited tracks onto your mobile device for offline play, whereas Spotify limits you to 3,333 tracks for offline play. Now for most people, that's not an issue - but I have a 64 GB iphone, and currently have 3,796 tracks on my iphone (36.4 GB). Now, I guess I could survive on 3,333 songs, but I'm sorta crazy and listen to tons of music.
ReplyDeletewish mog would develop a home screen control like spotify - where you can pause, skip forward or back to tracks. love mog in every way - except this one- and also- I can't create playlists on my Samsung tablet (appears on my husband's iphone mog app- but not my android. love to be able to create different "areas" for types of music. also, to move all tracks "favorites" to queue at one time. but have both spotify and mog - always go back to mog - even tho spotify has the home screen control even when locked screen - mog just seems much more comprehensive. I use jambox and soundfreaq wireless speakers - both with no problems with either s or m.
ReplyDelete