streaming music

I finally found a high quality place for streaming music - MOG. Its $10 month. But it is high bit rate. The quality is very good. Not as user friendly as Pandora, but it sounds a lot better.

There is an option to turn down the quality when using a cell phone network. You'd want to do that if you don't have a fast enough connection for the bitrate.

I usually listen over wifi. There is also a website interface for PCs.

The have a real big catalog.

My gripe is that they don't have "channels" like Pandora. Instead of listening to "classic rock" or some other genre, they've got something called MOG Radio. Search for an artist, hit the MOG radio button which will play similar artist. There is a neat slider that lets you select if you want that artist plus just a few others or just a little bit of that artist plus a lot more content from others.

They also lack a "like" or "dislike" button. Instead, it works more like Apple's "genius" that decides you like something based on how much you listen to it.

Anyway, the audio quality is real good. And you can listen to whatever you want, build playlists, etc.

Sounds a lot like Spotify. That's what I use. It's 10 bucks a month for the premium service which will let you stream to your mobile device. The quality is excellent as well.

The little I've read indicates that MOG might have a better catalog in the classic rock department. For example, I think MOG has the entire Pink Floyd catalog whereas Spotify doesn't. However, that may have changed. Regardless, both catalogs are surprisingly large.

You probably can't go wrong with either, but if the "channels" aspect bothers you on MOG, Spotify does offer a channel by genre in addition to channels by artist or song. It offers a thumbs up/thumbs down feature as well. If that's important to you, you may want to give Spotify a look.

It shouldn't be too long before Apple, Amazon, etc. get into the streaming music game. Personally, I haven't spent a dime on digital music other than my 10 bucks a month to stream since I signed up for Spotify. I probably spent 20-30 bucks a month on digital music downloads prior to that. They have to be taking a huge hit with these subscription services entering the marketplace.

Anybody big into vinyl on here? I'm starting to experiment with it and have a very modest setup at the moment. I enjoy it, so I'll likely upgrade in the future. If anyone has recommendations on high quality but reasonably priced turntables (less than $300), I'd like to hear them...

Google released their music platform a few weeks ago and if you sign up before like july 15 it's only 8/mo, but personally I like spotify better. I think it's great that you can listen to other people's playlists.

Google Play - Tried it. There's a huge deal-breaker for iOS people: you can't browse or view what you've downloaded for offline listening. You can download stuff so you can listen to it without streaming it (eating your data plan). But there is no way to view what you've downloaded vs what you'd have to stream. Not a problem for the Android app though.

Rdio - works pretty good. Allows downloading or "sync to mobile" as they call it. And allows you to view what you've "sync'd to mobile". My only disappointment with them is their radio/stations feature sucks. Start a station based on an artist and it only finds 4-5 artists (which may or may not be related in any way) that it plays over and over again.

MOG - was bought out by Beats. Beats doesn't have a radio feature. But they do have really cool curated playlists. Anyway, so long, Beats.

Spotify - you can't favorite anything or add anything to any kind of library for playing later, either online or offline. The only organization they have at all over there is to save things into playlists. Like an album and want to listen to it later? You have to put the contents of that album into a playlist. You can download a playlist for listening without streaming. In short, Spotify makes their users do all the work.

Itunes radio - streaming only for now and not at high quality. However it is free.

Pandora - its been a while since I last looked, but their audio quality disqualifies them.

As much competition as there is in this space, it is surprising that that every service has at least one glaring hole in it. Beats has brand name people behind it who are too arrogant to listen to their customers. Rdio appears not to be trying very hard. Spotify is like **** it I've got market share. Itunes is like "I'm Apple, dammit". Google is the best IF you're on Android - shocker. Pandora is like "we were here first, so we don't need high audio quality".