MOG to shut down, replaced by Beats Music

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?
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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 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

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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?

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?

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?