Check out audio circle forums for more info. Beats will NOT work with Squeezebox, all your favorites will be gone. Will only work in a browser on a pc, and phones and price will increase to $10 or $15 depending on plan. I am very upset about this. We need to email them and have Mog customers grandfathered in to Beats without any changes. Don't think that will happen though!
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I have been using MOG on my Squeezebox Touch for a number of years and have really enjoyed it. I agree with Jeffjazz that Beats will not work with any Squeezebox streamer and they probably look at us as too small a market to accommodate. I sent them an Email anyway and if anything comes of it I will let you know. Looks like the obvious choice for a replacement would be Spotify. That is probably the direction I am headed. |
Yeah, it looks like they're going to abandon us Squeezebox users. Although there's still time for them to change their mind I doubt they will. I've been looking at Spotify too - specifically the third-party Triode plugin for the Touch (and other Logitech players). I have a free account with Spotify but have never listened to it much because MOG was so great. I'll have to see if it's worth the money but you have to have a premium account to try it on the Squeezebox. The sad thing is, if they would open up their API, somebody would almost certainly develop a plugin for MOG. They say that they may do this at some point but who knows if they'll do it before we all move to something else. I'm sure I'm not their target demographic - I listen to ALBUMS not playlists. Their social media focus is also lost on me. Ah well, so we move on. Dick |
I received the email below from Beats Music for MOG users. I am undecided if I should use Beats Music. Do you have any comments after using Beats Music? ======================== Hey MOG Listeners, We owe you an update. We wanted to give you more details and clarification about what you can expect over the next few months. If you’d like to try Beats Music, please sign up for a free trial and check it out. You don’t have to wait until we send you the free month code – you can add that credit to an existing Beats Music account in March. We wanted to allow as many of you as possible to take advantage of the AT&T offer first. We’re also building a playlist transfer tool so you can bring your playlists over from MOG to Beats Music. Favorites will not transfer because Beats Music’s feature “My Library” works a bit differently. We wanted to take a moment to highlight how Beats Music has incorporated some of the best features of MOG. The 320kbps high quality audio streams across platforms, competitive 20+ million track catalog available to search-and-play on-demand, and killer personalized recommendations are still essential to the new music experience we’ve built. New releases are also available on Beats Music, but now we divide them up so you can browse by genre — we got this feedback from you back in the MOG days, so we hope you like this change. You can browse them by genre from the “Find It” section. “The Sentence” is a powerful way to create a practically never-ending radio station based on your chosen mood and the genre you’d like to hear. We think it’s a big improvement on artist radio. Also, artist radio fans please check out the “Intro to ” and “Deep Cuts” playlists for artists instead. We’ve found them to be just like human-curated artist stations. More to come! Lastly — we really want to highlight our expert curation. Please check out our playlists. They’re really, really good. “Find It” and “Just For You” are two great places to start. Like we said before, MOG will shut down on 4/15/14. Thank you for being a part of it, and thank you for reaching out to us with your feedback over the last few weeks. Seriously. We are humbled by how much you care and we hope this makes the transition easier. |
I received the same email as Hgeifman and responded with my concerns. BEATS responded saying we should submit suggestions to them at [email protected]. I just sent them the following, I, and many other Logitech Squeezebox users would love to have the option to continue to use MOG (or what it becomes) on our Squeezebox products. Without compatibility we will be forced to go with Spotify as it seems to be the only viable option. We, as audiophiles really appreciated the audio advantages of MOG compared to many of it's competitors. Please keep us in mind. Thank you, Robert (Audio Lover) |
i posted my initial impressions of beats on another thread. i'm still undecided if i'm gonna go with beats or spotify when mog shuts down---i'm impressed with beats sq and depth of catalog but a bit frustrated with their over-busy ui and useless-to-me features like social media and left-field recommendations. spotify has simpler interface and somewhat ambiguously claims that like beats they stream 99% of their stuff in 320kb (and use ogg format, which is supposed to be superior to mp3), but users seem to be skeptical. in any event, i'll miss mog. |
RDdio is the way to go... |
I would love to try Beats but I don't listen to music on my phone and I don't have (or want to place) a computer near my audio system. At this point those appear to be the only avenues for receiving their stream. I don't even mind the price increase so much - $4.99/mo was an unbelievable deal. As I said above, if they would just document and open their API, I bet somebody would do the work for them and they could retain all of us. Thanks for the email address Tune_man. I'll probably send them a similar email. Maybe if enough of us speak, they'll hear. Dick |
I cancelled my MOG account today and am undecided on what streaming service I will use. I currently am using Pandora, Calm Radio, Radio Paradise and sometimes TuneIn. This might be enough. Most likely, I will stay with the above for a while. I am in no hurry to decide. I had hoped that Beats Music would of treated its MOG customers better. It bugs me that they doubled the price immediately and did not give us a 6 monthly grace period (or something similar) at the $5 rate. It is unclear to me if Beats Music will have a similar user Interface and artist selection process that MOG had. Beat Music Users Only: For those people that signed up for Beats Music, how do you like it? Do you recommend it? What other streaming services do you suggest I look at and why? |
I asked Beats Music questions about album selection and the Desktop App. Their response is below: Thank you for contacting Beats Music support today. It is great to see you have some interest with Beats Music. But to answer your inquires. 1. Beats Music much like its predecessor Mog has similar search features such as searching for an artist by name and receiving results for albums and songs. Beats music interface is slightly different from Mog but its easy and simple to use. 2. As far as the desktop app to be completely honest it is different from the mobile app. The interface of the app is a little simplified from the mobile app. For example the home menu screen on the mobile app the following tabs will be Just for you The sentence Highlights Find It and the web app will only have the Just for you and Highlights app. But the functionality is pretty much similar. I really hope this information provided is rendered pretty helpful. Thank you again for choosing Beats Music as your music provider. Enjoy your Journey in Sound Beats Music Listener Support ==================== Based on the above response, and my other research, I might try Beats Music. I have not decided yet. Does anyone using Beats Music have any comments? |
i continue to have mixed feelings about beats. perhaps i'm being reactionary, but i don't and probably won't like it as much as mog, which is/was simpler and meatier. beats ui continues to confound--there's too much stimulus and too much effort to get to the actual music you want to play. the curated playlists have some appeal--it's occasionally nice to let the site do the selecting for you--but in its effort to be all things to all people the lists err on the side of over-inclusiveness; beats doesn't have an equivalent to mog radio, which locked you much more tightly into the precise sound you're craving. beats' sq is equivalent to mog, altho it's still buggy as hell (they seem to be beta testing), eons better than pandora or slacker. spotify still looms as a viable option. a quandry within a conundrum. |
As I noted above, I canceled MOG and started to use iTune for album selection. The iTune options are Internet where you can select streaming from different music types (classical, jazz, blues, country, etc) and it lists the station and bit rate. The other option is to build your own radio station by clicking the + button. For example, try listing to "Michael Hedges" or "David Grisman" or "Enya". These are just examples. You can enter your own artist and build a custom station around your selection. I am still leaning but I like the build my own station option the best. I still like Pandora and Calm Radio. iTunes is free and I believe their bit-rate is 256k but I am not sure. As several people have noted above, I also liked using MOG and am sorry this format is going away. I am surprised that Loomisjohnson noted above that Beats Music site is buggy and its UI is hard to use. Does anyone have any additional comments on using Beats Music? |
As I said above. If I can't get Beats to my home system without attaching a computer, then it's not going to be for me. I've been playing around with Spotify on the desktop, checking the selection, etc. The sound quality seems ok (as best as I can tell with Audio Engine A2 speakers) but there are a few albums that are missing where I found them on Mog. However, what is more distressing to me is the penchant for some songs within an album to be grayed-out and inaccessible. This doesn't make sense to me. I can understand a whole album being missing due to digital rights issues but one or two songs? |
i'm using spotify, having tried beats already. spotify has the library, and the sq is comparable to mog (some say better because they use ogg instead of mp3), though i find the interface less intuitive and more confusing--it's harder to simply set up and/or scroll through a play queue, though still better than beats. they also seem to provide less artist/album info than mog. time will tell. |
QoBuz is a new high quality streaming service that is expected in the United Stares in October. Their service availability needs to be confirmed. I copied the post below from their web site: "There are two levels of high quality audio available: Lossless, the uncompressed "True CD Quality" at 16-bit, as well as our 24-bit Studio Masters range , boasting the actual quality of the files as they were recorded in the studio! Better than CD quality. Both of which guarantee you the most faithful sound possible on your sound system, computer audio player, (iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc.) or portable device (iPod, iPhone, Android, etc.). Top it all off with the Qobuz Hi-Fi Guide, which advises you on the latest and greatest high-end audio equipment to be combined with the superior audio quality of our products, and we have a truly complete music experience. So for audiophiles and pure music lovers, look no further. At Qobuz we've found the perfect recipe to satisfy your musical and technological hunger”. http://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/offers/music-streaming-subscription http://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/about The above looks very interesting for streaming. Time will tell. Does any one in Europe have any comments on using QoBuz? |
I was a big MOG fan, and I switched over to Beats. The sound quality is noticeably worse than MOG. It's still good, but it is an obvious downgrade. I just signed up yesterday for the free trial of qobuz. The sound quality is superb. You can even stream hi-res tracks, which sound incredible. The only drawbacks so far are (1) it's all in French (although google translates it on the fly pretty well, (2) the catalog is much more limited than MOG or Beats - at least for the music I listen to -- but it's still very good, and (3) there seem to be some glitches with searching and with streaming in the dedicated app. Still, I highly recommend trying it out. In the meantime, people have been complaining to Beats, so maybe they will improve their service as well. |