I found your article interesting and informative. Like you, although not as extensively, I listened to some of services you discussed with varying results and found that MOG was the better choice. I've been a MOG subscriber for three months now and have enjoyed the user experience as well as the CD-quality sound.

Your choice is spot-on.

For reference, what is your high end setup for testing?

My experience is probably not typical, but I find these services not very useful, since their genres are defined by people and standards that don't correspond to my interests. More to the point, I enjoy music in nearly every genre, but only one percent of the items in any given genre. Going through 100 tracks to find one I like is a waste of time. The only music service I ever found useful was the original Napster, which had nothing at all to do with being free. The key with Napster was taking a specific song and artist I liked and finding users who had that song, then exploring what else those users had. Relying on services to define genres or "if you like this, then you might like this and this" etc. has never worked for me.

I've had other rare experiences in finding music with a much better hit rate than one in a hundred, but those were almost like events in history rather than venues. When Allan Freed played his bucket of 78's in Akron in the early 50's, many of my older cousins jumped on the stuff and I enjoyed their records years later. The explosion of rock-n-roll on hundreds of *independent* radio stations in the late 50's was a goldmine. The emergence of FM radio for independent DJ's before it became commercial (circa 1966) was wonderful - often we heard full length tracks that were not played on AM radio, and the types of music were amazing. The acid era and classic rock era were OK, but the glam, punk, disco, newwave and other genres were far more fertile for original ideas and music construction. The explosion of indie recordings in the 90's when young people could afford quality recording gear to make their own tracks at home - that was the most important factor in what made Napster so great - the indie artists could get distributed democratically. When it comes to jazz, I've had a lot of exposure to jazz groups playing in public so that I didn't have to go to clubs and bars.

I could never understand how so many audiophiles who are so picky about sound reproduction could enjoy so much mediocre music. Especially the so-called classical music. I've heard a number of good things, but extracting those from the overall heap is an arduous task that requires a lifetime of drudgery - not for me.

Much appreciated comparison.
I just tried signing up for MOG, is it at all possible to do without using Facebook?

You're actually spot on about the compression in Spotify, but luckily there is an option to turn it off. In preferences there is an option that says "Set the same volume level for all tracks" which is on by default. You can easily A/B the difference, which is big. If you want high quality (320 kbps) streaming, you need to have the $9.99/month service and manually check a box in preferences to enable it (which annoyingly sometimes gets reset on updates).

I like the organization and large collection Spotify offers, and generally think the sound quality is great. Thanks for the article though, will definitely give MOG a spin.

Can't say I'm surprised at the result, since MOG founder David Hyman is a dyed-in-the-wool, vinyl obsessed audiophile. You should ring him up for an interview!

It doesn't get the respect it deserves. Every time I try Spotify - either for the rare album that they have and MOG doesn't - or because goofy metadata has made something un-findable on MOG, I'm offended by the lack of quality. I've read on the internet that this or that percentage of their stuff is really 128kbps, bit so far they've batted zero for me.

Both services, by the way, seem to be plagued with the occasional bit of bad metadata. I'm listening to a Ben Webster live date at Ronnie Scott's club right now. MOG pimped it on the home screen, but it doesn't return from a search for either Ben Webster or Ronnie Scott. Go figure. I don't really think either search engine truly sucks, but it's hard to tell.

I don't know how it works or looks, since I have a subscription.

You can link to a sing on MOG and presumably, a non-subscriber should be able top play it. I don't know what a non-subscriber will see. When I follow such a link, I end up logged in and looking at my own play queue.

For the sake of science, here's a link:

http://mog.com/m/track/536711

Somebody who isn't a MOG subscriber, please follow it and post waht happens.

I've read that MOG has a standalone app for PC (already out for MAC) on the way, and I know that the fidelity is going to be limited to lossy format, but I would love to see MOG have a WASAPI interface to the standalone player. Having the player bound to a web browser is a drag, as everything passes through the mixer, so you get PC sounds and web page (advertisements) blowing through your MOG music if you surf when you listen.

I read the article and unfortunately all of it except Rdio relates to me due to licensing for Canadian service. I've heard MOG is making the commitment to come but they haven't yet.

I have heard similar remarks about Rdio quality from my friends in the US. However, I cannot share their sentiments here in Canada. I have no idea if Rdio supports its stream regionally which would account for the difference, however I listened to many genres and songs over Rdio both streaming to my computer and syncing to mobile and to be honest there is little difference say comparing to a purchased song on iTunes (my a/b comparison).

I don't think comparing to music over 3G is going to be a fair field and if that is how you were streaming from all services then so be it, but 3G streaming is hardly consistent and at least for me I don't use that portion of the service.

By far syncing to mobile is Rdio's big strength because I can be listening on the computer via stream and then if I like I can sync to my phone and pick up where I left off and at very good quality.

Streaming Rdio is good quality. I've noticed some rare times the lower bit rates but it's rare. Quality in my guesstimation between 192-256kbps.

Syncing to mobile offers you the highest quality. As a guideline, I had a few albums loaded and I was surprised how much data it was storing on my phone for those songs. Equivalent to the same number of songs from my purchased iTunes library.

Thanks for the great thought provoking article. It will be interesting to see these services grow (and hopefully improve) over the coming months and years. This website is so rewarding and articles like this add to the great experience!

Having tested many of these same services, I came to the same conclusions regarding the quality of the streams.

Let me add that MOG has superb customer service; I have received prompt (typically within a few hours) engaged, courteous, and productive replies to my email inquiries, with proactive follow-up from the MOG folks.

Highly recommended.

Does Sirius belong in this group? It is more expensive, but they have a lot of channels, and DJs that pick music and provide interesting information about artists, sometimes. It works on the web at home, and on phones/tablets, as well as my car.

I have read that the Sirius/XM codec is difficult or strange, but it sounds good to me at home on my computer, through a USB Music Streamer+ to NAD preamp.