MOG offered me a free trial to its subscription-based streaming music service, MOG All Access, which launched on Tuesday. The service costs five bucks a month, and gives you unlimited on-demand streams of more than six million songs from all four major labels and plenty of indies. The site is trying to differentiate itself from competitors like Rhapsody and Napster with high-quality streams--all songs are 320kbps MP3s--and some fairly sophisticated music discovery features, like playlists posted by musicians (David Byrne got the featured spot on the day of launch) and other fans with similar tastes to yours ("Moggers like me").
(Credit:
Screenshot)
I've been sampling the service for about an hour, and I do appreciate the sound quality (although better volume-leveling between songs would be nice) and recommendation services. And I'd like to thank the designers personally for the ability to add any song to the already-playing queue--a feature I love on Grooveshark and my Zune HD and that I always miss whenever I use one of my iPods. But there's one big problem: song selection.
Because MOG is licensing content directly from copyright owners, there are big gaps from artists who simply don't want to participate in online music. The usual suspects like AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, and the Beatles are mostly missing in action. There are also strange gaps elsewhere. For instance, half the songs on the Pixies' "Surfer Rosa" are unplayable. Compared with Grooveshark, which relies on user-posted content, MOG has too many holes. And of course, Grooveshark remains free (although a $3/month subscription gets you a version without advertisements).
Song selection could improve over time as MOG signs more licensing deals, but I found some other related glitches as well. For instance, '70s folk artist Roy Harper, whom I often use as a test case to see how well an online service does with relatively obscure old content, has almost no playable content, but does offer a nice list of albums with links to Amazon. The only problem: when you follow the Amazon link on unplayable songs, it takes you to the Amazon Music front door--most of his songs aren't available for download there, either.
In its demonstration video, MOG touts its online radio service as a unique feature. When you're playing a particular artist, a slider lets you control how much variety you want, from "play only songs by this artist" all the way up to "play mostly songs from similar artists." It could use some fine-tuning, however. When I started a queue with a Modest Mouse song, it used Modest Mouse as the basis for its selection. Fair enough, but when I added songs by Talking Heads and Public Image Limited, the radio algorithm didn't account for those artists. It simply switched my radio playlist completely when the new songs started playing, showing all Talking Heads songs, all PIL songs, and so on. Pandora and Slacker do a much better job of creating custom stations based on multiple artists. (Although, of course, those services don't let you play individual songs on demand.)
Finally, as I wrote last week, I still think MOG's lack of mobile support is a fatal flaw, but one that could be easily remedied: Apple's approved iPhone clients for subscription services Rhapsody and Spotify, so why not MOG?
All of these flaws can be fixed, although licensing content takes time and convincing. I'm a big fan of competition, though, and MOG takes many of the best features of a lot of other services, combines them in one place, and improves on some of them. For that, the company should be commended.
Beleaguered online-music pioneer Napster announced to shareholders in a letter Friday that it's still employing investment bank UBS and may be positioning itself for "strategic alternatives" to keeping the company public--i.e. a sale.
The letter was sent on behalf of Napster's board in order to urge shareholders to not vote for three activist candidates for the board. "The press release recently filed by the dissident group appears to imply that your board is not willing to consider a sale of the company," the letter read. "This is not true."
The board additionally recommended that in place of the dissident candidates, shareholders re-elect existing board members Richard Royko, Philip Holthouse, and Robert Rodin.
Napster was the original name in digital music, and a notorious one at that. The free peer-to-peer service was silenced after a high-profile court battle. Its attempts to resurface as a legitimate subscription-based music service just haven't gotten it back on top, and the addition of 6 million DRM-free MP3s would've been more impressive, if Amazon MP3 weren't doing the same.
Napster's letter to shareholders insisted that the proposed new board members would lead the company in a wrong direction. "The dissident group's nominees have no relevant experience in the digital-music industry, have no public-company board experience, and the dissident group has not put forth any substantive plan for how their nominees will enhance value for our stockholders, if elected to the board," the letter read.
Napster launched its Web-based MP3 download store yesterday, and it seems to be the latest digital music whipping boy, with negative reviews in several places.
Let me start with the positives. Napster claims the store has 6 million tracks, which is 50% larger than any other MP3 store out there. They do have a single download of "The Promise" by When in Rome, an obscure 1980s single my wife loves but that iTunes will only let you buy as part of the full Napoleon Dynamite soundtrack. I'm sorry, Apple, but I won't pay more than $0.99 to get that song.
Two album results...but we won't show them to you.
(Credit: Screenshot)And of course it must be mentioned that every song on Napster's MP3 store is DRM-free, meaning it can be transferred to an unlimited number of computers and devices and will play in just about every music software program known to humankind.
But I'm afraid that Napster still falls short in interface design--a longtime complaint I've had with the company.
Oddly, the Napster home page still features the subscription service far more prominently than the MP3 store, even though the store launched today and will presumably be attracting a lot of onlookers.
When you do find the store, you'll probably recognize it: it looks an awful lot like iTunes rendered within a browser. Which would be fine if it worked as well as iTunes. Unfortunately, there are a few gaps. First, if you have Firefox pop-up blocking enabled, you have to turn it off. Second, when you get a list of search results, they seem to be listed in a random order, making it hard to find a particular item. (Perhaps they're listed by popularity? It doesn't say.) You can arrange them alphabetically, but it takes some hunting and clicking--some of the headers are clickable, some aren't.
Then, there are just some general bugs. For example, when I searched for the new Nick Cave album, Dig, Lazarus, Dig, I got a green bar showing me that two album results were available...but the screen for the results was strangely blank. (See the screenshot.) Huh? Another glitch: when I conducted a new search, sometimes it ignored the changed search terms and re-ran the previous search.
I also ran into the "this MP3 is not available" debacle that this Ars Technica reviewer describes--in this case, it was for a Pink Floyd album I was particularly excited about downloading, an obscure 2005 re-release of two songs from a 1968 movie called Tonight Let's All Make Love in London. But although the album showed up in my search results with a little "MP3" tag next to them, the MP3s aren't actually available for purchase. Insane.
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Napster)
Probably the biggest piece of digital music news to come out of CES 2008 was that Napster was planning to offer its complete catalog of more than 6 million tracks in the unprotected MP3 format.
On Tuesday, with the launch of version 4.5 of the software and store, that announcement becomes a reality. Although digital music stores such as eMusic, Amazon MP3, and even Napster itself already had MP3s on offer before this point, the collective catalogs of all three didn't even come near the volume of tracks you can find in the entire Napster library. All four major labels and thousands of indies are represented in the store, and every track will be available at the standard 99 cent price point.
Napster's Web-based store with the online media player window open.
(Credit: Napster)In addition, Napster's Web-based store, which is all that is required for MP3 purchases and downloads, is compatible with every operating system. And--of course--the MP3s can be played on any MP3 player, portable video player, or music cell phone. Currently, 95 percent of the catalog is encoded at 256Kbps, which is reasonably high-quality for an MP3, and each track comes with hi-resolution album art (at least 1,000x1,000 pixels). Although Napster has quite an international presence, the MP3 store will only be available to U.S. residents for the time being.
Napster will continue to offer its online and To Go subscription services for $12.95 or $14.95 per month, respectively. The music associated with a subscription will remain in the protected WMA format with the time-out capability.
The company did make some improvements to its online interface. It now features a "liquid layout," which resizes everything within both the store and media player windows when you adjust the size of either window. Napster has also improved its download management system so that users can better view what has been purchased already and whether it was ever downloaded after the purchase.
Sadly, because of label restrictions, Napster will not be offering any type of trade program for customers who have a library of DRM-protected WMA files that they purchased a la carte. However, the licenses on those files will continue to be supported by the service, so no need to worry about a repeat of the MSN Music scandal. At least not for now.
Social network, Imeem, has acquired struggling music-licensing company, Snocap, the company cofounded by Shawn Fanning of Napster fame, according to a published report
TechCrunch, citing an unnamed source, reported that the deal is being finalized this week.
Snocap offers to handle copyright and music licensing for musicians and also powers embeddable download stores that artists can place on any site. From these digital-music vending machines, musicians sell their own music.
In October, Snocap CEO Rusty Rueff told CNET News.com that the company had cut its staff from 56 to 26.
When AT&T (then Cingular Wireless) introduced its music service late last year we admired the carrier's model. Rather than creating its own music store, as Sprint and Verizon Wireless did, Cingular partnered with online music subscriptions services like Napster Mobile. To us, it seemed like a clean and a simple arrangement, even if you couldn't use Napster to download songs over the air.
But AT&T kicked off the CTIA fall 2007 today when it announced that wireless downloads from Napster will be available next month. For $7.49 for five songs per month or for $1.99 each, subscribers will be able to browse and purchase songs directly from the cell phone. Subscribers will then get two copies of the track; one will download to their handset and the others will download to their PC. Yes, you'll need a 3G AT&T phone with support for AT&T Music to use the service and no, the iPhone will not be compatible. The specific models that will support the new service will be announced next month.
Though AT&T is a little late to the wireless music game, and it price per song is more expensive than both Sprint or AT&T, the carrier finally has brought its mobile music network into the 21st century. We'll be eager to see how they fare.
Click me to check out the new Napster interface.
Other than its first reported quarter of positive cash flow, Napster has enjoyed a relatively unremarkable year--at least on the surface. It is now apparent, however, that plenty of tinkering has been going on in the background.
The company on Tuesday announced a fairly significant redesign to its music service and software. The new Napster, version 4, is lighter and a bit simpler--and it definitely appears to take some cues from RealNetworks' Rhapsody.
Of particular note are the launch of a Web-based version of the service, which will enable Mac and Linux users to join in the fun, and the addition of the Automix feature, a new music discovery tool.
I could go on to list all the details in long and boring fashion, but a picture (actually, 22 pictures) is worth a thousand words--wouldn't you agree? Check out our slide show for an up-close and personal look at Napster 4.0.
Snocap's leadership, from left to right: Ali Aydar, chief operating officer; co-founders Jordan Mendelson and Shawn Fanning.
(Credit: Snocap)UPDATE (12:15 p.m. PDT Friday): CNET News.com interviewed Snocap CEO Rusty Rueff after this story was published. He says the company's music stores just weren't catching on fast enough and its time to sell the company. You can read what he has to say in this story.
Snocap, the music-licensing company best known for being the follow-up act of Napster founder Shawn Fanning, has cut its staff by 60 percent, a spokeswoman for the company said Thursday evening.
Founded in 2002 by Fanning, Jordan Mendelson, and Ron Conway, Snocap started out trying to provide digital-music licensing, but has moved into new areas, such as setting up online stores for musicians.
Thanks in large part to Fanning's Napster fame, the San Francisco-based company attracted a lot of attention when it launched, but has seen its profile steadily diminish in recent years.
The blog Valleywag, which first reported the story, also said the company is for sale.
"Snocap has received interest from several companies and is pursuing that," said Susan Celia Swan, a company representative.
The idea behind Snocap was to help sell music legally online. The company handled the licensing and copyright issues and anybody wishing to sell music from a Web site need only have Snocap set them up with a digital music store that can be embedded into any site.
The service allows artists to sell music directly to consumers and even set their own prices.
But many industry insiders were skeptical about Snocap's chances from the start. Fanning, who founded pioneering file-sharing service Napster, was public enemy No.1 in the sector for years. Skeptics questioned whether music executives would do business with him.
This time Fanning was holding a white flag, however. He declared that Snocap was all about empowering artists and the legal sale of music.
In September 2006, Snocap announced a deal to sell music on MySpace.com. The service allowed bands of any size to sell music for whatever price they wanted. Snocap and MySpace would share the small fee that they charged. It was MySpace's first official e-commerce venture.
Snocap said that its MyStores have attracted more than 175,000 registered consumers, and over 80,000 artists have created their own storefronts.
The number of registered consumers seems shockingly low when one considers that MySpace is supposed to have over 100 million registered users. I know that there are far less active monthly users on MySpace but even if there are 10 million, one would think that Snocap should have a larger profile.
In September, MyStores received nearly 20 million unique visitors and more than 140 million monthly impressions. What's important here is that this is an e-commerce play but the company doesn't reveal anything about sales.
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MyStrands)
MyStrands provides event goers with an easy way to interact with their surroundings using their mobile phones. The derivative of PartyStrands got a substantial update this week. The service (which we covered in November) has rolled out a few new tools for users to host similar features in their own homes.
MyStrands now lets you pull from Napster's music library to host music for parties. Users can browse through Napster tracks using the MyStrands app and play any full song for free up to three times, without actually having to use Napster. There's also an indie-artist radio player, with suggestive interactivity similar to Pandora, where the playlist changes based on your likes and dislikes.
What's really neat is the new embeddable music widget. You can put it on your blog or social networking profile, and if you're using the MyStrands music player, your current song will automatically be shown to other users. People can just click on the artist and get more information about how many other MyStrands users have listened to that same song.
I first experienced a service similar to PartyStrands at a concert last year, and it was surprisingly entertaining. People were sending pictures and messages to a special number, and their content was being shown on the JumboTron. Some wrote haiku, others just shout outs to friends, but when you're waiting for a concert to start, anything is entertaining. I'm not so sure the same can be said about using a service like this at smaller house parties, though.
[via Mashable]
AOL. Napster. Partnership. Imagine if those three words had been put together in a sentence way back in 1999. It would've been something out of The Onion: AOL was the massive, dominant corporate giant, and Napster was pretty much a bunch of punks who were raising hell. But times change, and companies change, and today AOL has announced that it has inked a deal with the music subscription service--formerly synonymous with cyber-piracy--as the power behind the download service on its AOL Music site.
Napster will be replacing the AOL MusicNow subscription download service, which AOL had been operating since its acquisition of MusicNow in late 2005. The transition is expected to be complete within 60 days, according to an AOL press release. Current AOL MusicNow subscribers will be sent e-mails informing them of the switch, and will have the choice to opt out. AOL also is hoping for a seamless transition: current members will have their usernames, passwords, music libraries, and playlists preserved. If all goes as planned, that is.
It's interesting: my impression is that nowadays a copyright-infringement playground like the former Napster would immediately be seen as a potential partner or acquisition for a major company like AOL, and we would be seeing deals like this one made much earlier in the company's history. Just look at Google's purchase of YouTube, and the subsequent partnerships with major TV networks that have been popping up; perhaps a more appropriate example is the major movie studios' deal with BitTorrent. These days, punks raising hell on the Web aren't a bogeyman, they're a lucrative business opportunity. But back in 1999, it seems as though nobody really knew what to do about Napster.
As I said, times change.
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