I was hugely bummed at Lala's untimely demise.

Now this MOG - Millions of songs on-demand and radio that's just hard to believe ,if it lasts for more than a couple months, could be a worthy or even better replacement.

For five bucks a month you get computer access to a library that looks to be comparable with what Lala had. The five bucks is unlimited streaming, all you can eat. For ten bucks, you get mobile device service similar to Slacker, with caching on the device (for Andriod and iPhone only).

Streams are MP3 at 320 Kbps, so the quality should be pretty listenable, more or less, give or take.

They seem to post new releases promptly, although they don't have the new Leon Russell album, for whatever that's worth.

There's a Pandora-like "artist- radio" feature that has a kind of cool slider that narrows or broadens the playlist. Art one end it's limited to just the artist you entered. At the other, you get a variety of artists.

There are disadvantages. The search engine blows. "Fred Hirsch" will not return Fred Hersh. God knows how you might search for classical music (or if there's even any to search for). There's no way to browse by genre, and the related or similar artists feature seems to only be based on users' playlists. There are other quibbles.

But all in all, it's very promising.

Carl, thanks for the heads up. I'm going to give it a try.

Anyone else give this a try? Satisfied with selection and streaming?

Edited January 18, 201115 yr by blessingx

Okay, a few hours in this is pretty damn cool. Decent quality (once you set download quality) and selection really quite nice. Wish they had a stream only plan for mobiles or an iPad app, but even at $10, this a nice deal over paid Pandora or Rhapsody. Cool with AirPlay too. Thanks for the tip.

Edited January 18, 201115 yr by blessingx

"I'm a mog: half man, half dog. I'm my own best friend!"

Gonna gush some more. This library is deep. My DVD purchases have slowed dramatically since Netflix (only picking up the occasional exception) and I wonder if MOG is going to do the same for music (yeah I know not very audiophile-like, but...). I've had better luck with searching than above (Classical easier to find by conductor, misspellings better in breaks - not full names, etc.). Even finding Living Stereo and Reference Recording albums. Anyway, for those remotely considering, do the trial online (14 days), instead of phone (7), even if you're using your phone. Nice Roku integration too. Hell a Roku*, screen, inexpensive 16-bit DAC and pair of monitors gives you a cheap jukebox with nearly every album on it. Then download copies to your iPhone/Android when you leave.

* or Airport Express/AppleTV with iPhone/iPad and AirPlay.

Edited January 20, 201115 yr by blessingx

Anyone excited about the US launch of Spotify? Also 320kbps (in most cases). Nice interfaces.

(spotify)

I put my email in the invite thing a few weeks ago and still haven't seen a reply.

I want to be excited but it seems to good to be true.

I really am only interested in free plans at this point as I have plenty of music and it would be purely for convenience.

It seems like everything starts out free and becomes fee for service eventually.

Edited July 14, 201114 yr by aardvark baguette

Some details on the Free:

For the first six months, a free user is now limited to 20 hours of listening a month; after six months, the limit becomes 10 hours, and no song can be listened to more than five times in a month. American users will be subject to the same limitations.

I was able to get a free subscription to Spotify this morning and have been testing it out. I currently use and love MOG both in terms of selection and quality, so I don't see myself switching to this anytime soon. However, it is nice having a desktop client that acts a little like itunes with song downloadings, etc. MOG is purely browser based which can be a pain in the ass sometimes.

However, i'm able to get mog to sound pretty good by using Pure Music, which has a feature of bypassing system volume and directing all computer audio through PM, which helps.

Some details on the Free:

For the first six months, a free user is now limited to 20 hours of listening a month; after six months, the limit becomes 10 hours, and no song can be listened to more than five times in a month. American users will be subject to the same limitations.

pppffffftttt.

I signed up for a premium to compare to Mog. Pretty similar. One Spotify advantage is Squeezebox support (supposedly, haven't tested).

Free spotify invite arrived today, to bad as I already had one. Don't know if this is a one time use, tied to me, etc , but you are welcome to try, let us know how you get on.

Hello again,

Well, the wait is finally over - Spotify is available in America.

How would you like to be one of the very first people in the U.S. to

enjoy Spotify for free? It’s the least we can do to reward your

patience.

Let’s get you started

Spotify is the award-winning music platform that gives you on-demand

access to over 15 million tracks in high-quality audio, wherever you

go.

Whether you're searching for the hottest new releases or hits from the

past, your favorite tracks are just a click away.

Ready?

All you need to do to create your free Spotify account is follow this link:

https://www.spotify.com/invitation/bSrDGcrHxnz3UP4n

We hope you enjoy the ride.

Find out more

If you’d like to learn more about Spotify come this way:

http://www.spotify.com/about/what/

Discover how Spotify Premium gives you all this and more right here:

http://www.spotify.com/get-spotify/premium

Got a question about Spotify? Come visit our help section:

http://www.spotify.com/help/faq/

You can also stay in the Spotify loop by following us on Twitter and Facebook.

http://www.twitter.com/spotify

http://www.facebook/spotify

Happy listening!

The Spotify Team.

Just started my free invite today. I'm not finding some of my favs, usually that entire album is not shown, but have already picked up a couple of new tunes. Seems to be a nice increase in sq compared to grooveshark. Pretty simple UI.

One UI not so simple is on the Squeezebox - for some reason they output all titles and you only find out if it playable in your region after clicking play. This can happen album after album. Have no idea total percent of non-US playable tracks, but from my searches it's a ton. So irritating.

Very irritating. Specially because if you have a play queue, instead of skipping the track, it just sits there until you FF to the next track. I can't imagine this is normal, it must be a bug....

Otherwise the sound quality is good and selection so far is fine.

Been going on for at least five months - http://ow.ly/5FJcJ

It would appear that spotify has some long running issues ...

bitrategate

Mind The Gap!

Spotify invites are alleged to be here (courtesy of Lefstez, who is hyper-shilling for them): http://www.spotify.com/us/lefsetz/

I don't have the link to the relevant support thread handy, but the fly in the ointment seems to be that it requires a P2P connection (bit torrent, I assume). That won't fly through work firewalls - or mine for that matter- and will pose a problem for folks whose ISPs limit cumulative bandwidth or frown on too much up-bound traffic. People who are stealing music don't mind some network issues. But on behalf of those of us who pay for the service, I'd advise they ditch that noise and just serve their streams from their own servers.

I'll give it a try, but I'm not sure it will unseat MOG at my house.

How does the Squeezebox support work? Is it an option for those of us with Linux-based music servers?

BTW, I noticed that MOG is alleged to be soon releasing a Squeezebox plugin.

I am not sure about the p2p thing, as I've used it @ work.( where it would have not worked for sure if p2p)

Maybe they took my advice for the US market before I gave it

The Leftsetz letter article on spotify raises some good points.

You are being tracked

"Without Spotify, labels know only when an album is sold. If a CD is ripped for a friend or borrowed for a party, they know nothing. Spotify gives them a record, by location, age and gender, of every single time a track is played. Jay-Z used to think he was big in London, based on U.K. album sales; it turns out he’s big in Manchester."

The desktop is free, but who uses a desktop, grandpa?

PAYING

Forget that Spotify is free on the desktop. The iPad has put a dent in PC sales, it killed the netbook, it’s all about wireless and hand-held. There’s no free option for mobile. To think people won’t pay is to believe they’re going to stop texting.

mmmkay

DRUGS

That’s what music is, a drug. That’s what Spotify is. And the way you get people hooked is to give them a taste for free.

Edited July 19, 201114 yr by Grahame

I just downloaded the client. I am reminded of how much I dislike iTunes. I guess that means they've done well

It's too soon to tell if they have as much material, or more or less than MOG.

The "star" functionality for favorites or "your collection" might or might not cut it. Props for it being quick. But will it work easily when you've saved a few hundred albums?

The business about streaming rate is troubling, both because of quality and because their responses to the fellow who complained strike me as devious and deceptive. If I liked devious and deceptive, I'd still be an eMusic customer.

I don't get why not - particularly for the US market - just ditch the P2P nonsense and serve the darned streams. Apparently, a paltry five bucks a month is enough to cover it. 30 days free trial, then pay up. That would be more than fair.

Hey Seibert,

I still don't get what you mean by p2p with this service... I checked the desktop version today and i can't find anywhere an option to let people into my music. Or evidence that such p2p would run in the background.

it's not p2p, it's strictly a streaming service, like pandora, but you choose.