Anyone who hasn’t been residing under a large rock in the middle of the Gobi Desert can see that technology has been shifting more and more in a mobile direction. As a result of this, storage (media and otherwise) has been taking a different direction than that of several years ago, in that while most storage is still physically stored on devices, it’s becoming more and more common to see storage and media available via servers. This storage has become commonly referred to as “the cloud,” which has become a sort of geek catch phrase that I’m sure many non-techie people have puzzled over. Well, Talk Android is here to help you understand this technology and, whats more, incorporate it into your life.
One area where cloud-based technology has been progressing is music. While Rhapsody was an early pioneer of this market, other companies have not sat dormant. Over the next few days, we’ll be taking a look at some of the more popular cloud-based music solutions that are available for the Android OS. All offer unlimited streaming of any music in their catalog for $9.99/month. Will any of these apps be useful for your music needs? Read on to find out about our first app on the list: MOG.
For the standard $9.99/month, MOG offers unlimited access to their music library via their website or their app. We’ll be taking a look at their Android app.
The first thing I noticed about MOG when I fired it up was its UI. It manages to be bold and colorful while maintaining an elegant and functional experience. What does this mean for you, the end user? It’s easy to navigate and it looks pretty doing it. From the main screen, you have quick access to the main features of MOG. At the top you have Search and Browse, which, along with My Downloads at the bottom, I’ll get into in a moment. Charts gives you three separate lists for the top 50 songs, albums, and artists, and New Releases (go figure) shows you the latest albums released. My Favorites gives you a one stop location for songs you’ve favorited via the player. You’ll also see controls for your player at the very bottom of the screen, including an interesting symbol over to the right, an integral part of MOG’s player that we won’t go into until later (FORESHADOWING!). These controls stay available in every page of app except Settings.
The Browse screen for MOG does about what you would expect it to. From here, you can select several places to find some good tunes. If you’re curious about what’s come out recently, what’s popular on the charts, or what other MOG users are listening to, this is the place to go. Additionally, this is another way to get to your own favorite songs, like the home screen.
Searching through MOG’s music library is performed with the same amount of robustness and attractiveness you’ll find throughout the rest of the app. You have easy sight of all of the available search options and as you type in your inquiry, MOG starts to match what you’re looking for. If you’re searching via artist, one really cool feature is that upon selecting an artist, you have the option of looking at similar artists. This is awesome if you’re looking for someone new to listen to and have a general idea of what style you’re in the mood for.
MOG’s queue list really doesn’t offer anything new that you haven’t seen before, just a list of what’s playing and going to be playing. Something worth mentioning is that the typical push-to-hold Android interaction is not at work here; instead pressing the arrow to the left of song title brings up an option menu. I actually prefer this approach in this case, simply because it makes navigation that much quicker.
While the queue is nothing special, it does offer the chance to show off the most differentiating feature of MOG: MOG radio. As you can see above, I’ve got one song in my queue. However, pressing the MOG radio button in the lower right corner brings up another control bar…
…whereupon you hit the On button and decide if you want more of the same artist or more similar artists. Adjust the slider bar to your interest, and voila, MOG populates your queue with your preferences. This queue is also constant in that changing the slider at any time adjusts your queue instantly without interrupting what your listening to. Cool and convenient if you change your mind about what you’re in the mood for.
Going into the settings, you folks that have an LTE or WiMax enabled phone, MOG has you in mind. When you’re in either a Wifi or 4G area, MOG automagically adjusts the sound quality to suit best quality. In 3G areas, it adjusts for best speed to ensure less skipping and faster load times. Beyond that you also have control of the quality of your downloads.
Downloads, you say? Indeed. This is where that My Downloads button on the home screen comes into play. One cool feature of MOG is the ability to download any music to your phone’s memory card instead of having to rely on a possibly finicky network. Now for those folks getting ideas about just hoarding a bunch of music and then skipping ship, know that the music you download requires you to play through the MOG app, which requires you to continue your $9.99/month membership. Depending on how much music you listen to, this is well worth the price considering that’s the price of only one standard album on iTunes or Amazon.
Now that we’ve gone through and looked at the features, it’s time for the odd quirks and issues. One thing fairly annoying that I kept running across is that in slightly lower signal areas, once the app had buffered a song for longer than it deemed reasonable, it would skip to the next song. This wasn’t all the time, but if it happened once, it was probable to happen again shortly thereafter. Restarting the app would correct this most of the time. One other odd quirk I experienced is that when paused, if I received a notification for something like an email or text message, the music would randomly unpause. This could be annoying if you’re the type to receive fairly regular notification and you’re trying to hold a conversation.
There you have it, the first app on our list! MOG is available for free on the Android Market with a $9.99 monthly fee, though it does have a trial period to test out the service.
Tomorrow we’ll cover our next app, Rdio. Will it compare? Tune in tomorrow to find out!