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.
