MOG (online music)

Infobox Website

name = MOG
url = http://mog.com


caption = MOG Home Page
commercial = Yes
type = Music Community
registration = Free
owner = MOG, Inc.
author = Communal

MOG is a social networking site where computer users who listen to their music primarily on their computers or iPods can set up personal pages with their musical interests and listening history. There are tools for connecting with other similar users. MOG is similar to Last.fm, but it first uploads a listing of a user's digital music collection to their MOG page, then it keeps track of what music is played on the user's computer.

Other features include music-focused blogging, dedicated pages for artists, albums and songs, tagging of music items, and direct links to iTunes and Amazon for music purchases. The site distributes a small application called MOG-O-MATIC that continuously updates the user's MOG site with the music currently playing on their computer or listened to on an iPod and any music added to the user's digital collection.

MOG was started by David Hyman, former CEO of Gracenote, co-founder of Addicted to Noise.

MOG is built on Web 2.0 technologies, including Ajax and Ruby on Rails, and powered by Gracenote Music ID technology.

MOG is a privately-held company headquartered in Berkeley, CA. It has raised capital from a variety of sources, including $2.8 million in A Round funding in April, 2008 from two of the four major labels Universal Music Group and Sony BMG along with [http://www.angelsforum.com/ The Angels' Group] . Since its launch on June 20, 2006, MOG has been featured in BoingBoing, Coolhunting, MTV.com, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Blender, Reuters, Spin.com, and many other media outlets and blogs.

Features

MOG-O-MATIC

MOG’s MOG-O-MATIC technology automatically creates a MOG page, so the MOG community can see what’s in the user's music collection and the artists, albums and songs listened to. MOG-O-MATIC is available for Windows and Macintosh.

Supported players for Windows

* Windows Media Player
* iTunes
* Winamp
* Real Player
* Real Jukebox
* Quicktime Media Player
* Yahoo Music Engine
* MusicMatch Jukebox
* QCD Player
* Napster
* J. River Media Center
* Foobar2000
* Media Monkey
* Media Player Classic

Supported players for Mac

* iTunes

ocial Networking

MOG’s “Find MOGS Like Me” feature automatically shows the user other users with a similar taste in music.

Music Discovery

Music discovery at MOG is driven by user recommendations. MOG connects people with similar musical taste and then displays the music collections on their iPods and hard drives. MOG provides 30-second sound samples of every song as well as direct links to iTunes and Amazon for download and CD purchases. It also features streaming uploads which allow visitors to hear entire tracks as uploaded by members of the community. MOG lets members upload complete MP3 files up to 15MB in size.

Blogging

MOG has tools for blogging. MOG-O-MATIC-powered automated widgets display what a user is listening to now, including his or her top song of the week, top songs of the month, most recently played songs, etc.

Custom widgets can also be created. For example, last shows seen, favorite love songs, top hip hop movies, etc.

MOG Page Customization

More ways to customize a MOG page include:
*Drag and drop technology
*Music clips
*Ability to embed video and audio clips
*Skins designed by pop-artists, including Kinsey, Frank Kozik and Coop

Additional Features

*Dedicated pages for every artist, album, and song include biography, discography, album art, and an aggregation of all corresponding posts (see “Music-focused tagging”, below). Each dedicated page includes direct links to iTunes and Amazon for purchase.
*Music-focused tagging allows users to tag posts with artist, album, song or more to enable easier searching and automatic aggregation of posts to corresponding dedicated pages.
*“MOG to Go” allows users to add MOG to blogs or MySpace pages.
*To see all posts, visit the [http://mog.com/read MOG all posts page]

External links

* [http://mog.com MOG homepage]

Press releases and commentary

June 2006

*Attention Music Freaks: MOG Launches Groundbreaking Music Website (press release)
*"Coolhunting.com": MOG [http://www.coolhunting.com/archives/2006/06/mog.php]
*"BoingBoing": MOG: Social Networking Around Music [http://www.boingboing.net/2006/06/19/mog_social_networkin.html]
*"Reuters": MOG starts test of music-based social network [http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2006-06-20T102438Z_01_N19365523_RTRUKOC_0_US-MOG.xml]
*"MP3.com": MySpace Rival MOG Launches [http://www.mp3.com/news/stories/4994.html]
*"MTV.com": iTunes + MySpace x Music Geeks = MOG, a New Site for Music Obsessives [http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1534589/20060619/index.jhtml?headlines=true]
*"Redherring.com": Social Networks Aim for Niches [http://www.redherring.com/article.aspx?a=17313]
*"CIO Today": MOG.com Aims To Be MySpace of Music [http://www.cio-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=1220000372TM]
*"Spin.com": New Website Mixes Networking, Musical Taste [http://www.spin.com/features/heythisisawesome/2006/06/060621_mog/]
*"Reuters/Billboard": Sites Tap into Social Networks for Music Discovery [http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2006-06-24T225622Z_01_N24278717_RTRUKOC_0_US-SITES.xml]

July 2006

*"Newsweek": Music Mania: These Online Music Sites Will Satisfy Your Individual Taste [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13772039/site/newsweek/]
*"Trendcentral": New Social Networking Site for Music Snobs [http://www.trendcentral.com/trends/trendarticle.asp?tcArticleId=1623]

April 2008

*"New York Times": [http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/music-start-up-tangos-with-universal-sony/ Music Start-Up Tangos With Universal, Sony]
*"TechCrunch": [http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/29/record-labels-strategically-invest-28m-in-mog/ Record Labels Strategically Invest $2.8M in MOG]