mog

Mog rumored to have sold itself to HTC Beats

Subscription music service Mog may have finally found a new owner.

The struggling service has been acquired by HTC's Beats, the smartphone maker's audio technology company, a source told Business Insider. BI's Matt Rosoff cautioned that it was just one source and should be classified at this time as only a rumor.

A Mog representative did not respond to a CNET request for comment and declined to discuss the rumor with BI, saying, "We're always looking for the best opportunity for our business and shareholders, but don't comment on specifics of those conversations. Nothing … Read more

Struggling music service Mog for sale

Mog, a subscription music service that competes against Spotify and Rhapsody, is for sale, CNET has learned.

Mog's representatives have contacted a varying range of companies about potential interest, according to numerous sources in the digital-music sector.

Marni Greenberg, a Mog spokeswoman, had little to say. "We're constantly speaking with companies and looking for the best opportunity for our business and our shareholders," Greenberg said. "We don't comment on the specifics of those conversations."

Founded in 2005, Mog is one of the smaller players in a market segment still trying to prove itself. … Read more

Take a tour of BMW's new Mog online music system

My iPhone, with 8GB of memory, can hold about 1,700 tracks. A BMW's internal hard drive has room for almost 3,000 tracks. Now, BMW's new Mog integration puts 14 million tracks at a driver's fingertips.

I sat in the driver's seat of a 2012 BMW 650i, with Robert Passaro, the head of BMW's App Center, in the passenger seat. But we weren't going anywhere. Our entire focus was on the stereo.

Passaro slotted an iPhone 4S into the BMW's cradle, nestled in the console compartment. Tapping the Mog icon on the … Read more

Car Tech Live 242: Is the Volt on fire...or just catching fire? (podcast)

The Chevy Volt gets the feds look at the safety of all electric cars, Nissan makes a fast charge cheaper (sort of), Toyota puts Intel Inside, and Mercedes reworks the lowly windshield wiper.

Subscribe with iTunes (audio) Subscribe with iTunes (video) Subscribe with RSS (audio) Subscribe with RSS (video) EPISODE 242

SHOW NOTES

With Mog, BMW adds on-demand music in the car

BMW announced plans to integrate on-demand streaming music in August, and this week the on-demand music service has finally been added to ConnectedDrive. But before you get too excited, the latest integration will only benefit Mog Primo subscribers.

Mog is an ad-supported streaming-music platform that one-ups Pandora by letting listeners dial up any song or artist they want to listen to online. For $4.99 per month, listeners can subscribe to the service and ditch the ads. If you want to access Mog's library of 13 million downloadable songs, you'll need to upgrade to Primo service for $9.… Read more

Work with the cool kids! Culture is a weapon in 2011's hiring battle

See that guy pictured above? The one with the beard grooming oil, the fancy tux and the spear gun? He's the best engineer in the world--and he has the toys to prove it.

Oh, the lengths startups are going to these days to get engineering talent.

Technology is evolving rapidly and engineers who know the latest and greatest coding languages and techniques are hard to come by, even in Silicon Valley. Undergrads are being wined (if they're, um, over 21) and dined by technology companies offering never-before-seen perks (cars! free apartments!) and impressive salaries.

Google currently pays recent … Read more

Coldplay snub sounds alarm for streaming music

Coldplay and singer Tom Waits last week issued no-confidence votes on subscription music services, or at least that's how the press is interpreting their decision not to distribute their latest albums through companies such as Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio, and MOG.

On Wednesday, CNET broke the news that Coldplay and Waits will follow other marquee acts, such as Adele and Prince, who have withheld at least part of their catalogs from some of the subscription services. Management for Coldplay and Waits did not respond to interview requests. So, while we don't know for sure why they chose to snub … Read more

Netflix splits in two

Watch our for a falling satellite on Friday, AT&T launches its 4G LTE network in five markets, and Netflix splits itself into a streaming video company with the same name and a DVD-by-mail service called Qwikster.

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

Facebook adding Spotify, MOG, Rdio, Rhapsody, and more?

We may finally have the answer to the great mystery of who Facebook will partner with to bring a music service to its massive social network: Everyone.

Dutch entrepreneur and developer Yvo Schaap took a look at the HTML for all the major music services and found that several had references in meta tags to what appears to be a custom Facebook format.

Specifically, Schaap found Spotify, MOG, Rhapsody, Soundcloud, Rdio, Deezer (France), and VEVO all seem to be tagging their songs to be Facebook-compatible.

Among the notable services absent from the list are Pandora and Napster. Pandora has been … Read more

MOG subscriptions down, in-game purchases up

Since multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft first rose to pop culture prominence, subscription fees have fueled the revenue stream for developers. Now, a new report from market researcher iSuppli suggests microtransactions will drive industry growth in years to come.

Basically, fewer new players are signing up to play MOGs, the report says, but those who are playing are dropping their money on add-ons and other in-game enhancements.

The iSuppli analysis reports that subscriber revenue in the combined North American and European markets for PC massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) and standard MOGs declined for the first time ever in 2010--piling up $1.58 billion in 2010, down 5 percent from $1.66 billion in 2009.

That decline seems even more dramatic when compared with the 10 percent annual growth in 2009 and the 21.6 percent increase in 2008. IHS did the math and speculates that the subscription market will decrease on an annual basis through the year 2015, when revenue will shrink away to $1.33 billion. … Read more