My Review of MOG

MOG started out as a music blogging site, but it recently reinvented itself as a subscription-based music service. For $5 a month, you can stream full-length tracks (like imeem) and play internet radio (like Pandora). If you don't subscribe, you get 30-second previews. I relied on imeem (before it went MySpaced) for trying out albums before I bought them, and I've been a very heavy user of Pandora for internet radio ($36 a year). After several weeks on MOG, here's my review.

Pros:
- The radio function is solid. It has the variety slider like Slacker, allowing you to listen to a station of only one artist, or slide a bar and hear artists gradually more different. Because full-track streaming is an option, you can play an entire album or select a single song, on-demand, unlike Pandora.

- The catalog is pretty good. When I searched for electronica DJ Kaskade, MOG pulled up hard-to-find albums such as the San Francisco Sessions (at the time of this post, not available on iTunes or Amazon).

- You can save any track to a playlist or to your "library" (stored on MOG) for later access.

Cons:
- You can't save a "station" or add an artist to a station. For example, I have a station on Pandora that I started with Stan Getz and added other jazz artists too, like Miles Davis and Billy Holiday. When I want to hear Stan Getz with a little variety on MOG, I have to manually type in Stan Getz and slide the bar every time, and I can't add in Billie. Sometimes I just want to hit "play" and hear some jazz. Not an option.

- Sadly, like every internet radio station I've listened to, if you "thumbs up" a track on MOG, expect to hear it twice an hour. Be very cautious about thumbing songs.

- The interface is ugly and annoying. Your MOG player is a separate window (a skinny window). If it jams up and you refresh that window, you lose your artist and variety selection. If also pops open new windows and tabs all over the place, such as when you click on an artist name for more information.

- It logs out across computers. When I have MOG open on my home computer, and then I go to work and open it on my laptop, I have sign in at work, then come home and sign in at home. I leave Pandora open all over the place and just hit "play" when I arrive. If I do that on MOG, it will play the 30 second samples because I'm logged out. We should be able to authorize 3 or 5 computers.

To sum up: I'm definitely keeping my MOG subscription. I love sampling full-length songs and albums, and the radio is solid. But I'm keeping my Pandora subscription too. I have Pandora One waiting for me at home and on my phone, and I listen to MOG at work. MOG's still fresh and has some kinks to work out (and add a downloadable player and a mobile app), but it has the potential to replace my Pandora subscription.