Pandora isn’t the only music service attaching itself to radios in new cars. A new MOG “music juke box service” has signed a deal with MINI and expects to be in a dozen car platforms by the end of next year.
MOG is a bit different than Pandora. It can give you a “Lady Gaga” station that plays nothing but Lady Gaga if you like, whereas Pandora mixes in similar artists. And you can call up a certain song, like a juke box, out of 10 million songs, it says.
“Pandora doesn’t have direct deals with the record labels, so they can’t do an artist-only channel. It has to be a mix. They don’t allow you to look at the cue in advance, based on their license. We let you do an artist-only channel or any mix,” said Drew Denbo, SVP of business development. Then again, Pandora is free to basic users and MOG charges $10 a month.
The car radio may actually display a “slider” like a slide rule, and if you move it to the far left, you get only Lady Gaga, as you move it increasingly to the right, you increasingly mix in more songs. Or a car radio knob can do the same thing by moving it to the left or right.
MOG will announce a second partnership with a major auto maker this year, it said.
Like Pandora, it is “very focused on the car space,” because “80 percent of music consumers primarily listen in the car,” said Denbo.
In the car, users receive MOG through a smartphone—an iPhone as well as some Android and BlackBerry phones. MOG lets you stream directly to the radio or download songs to the phone and then play them through the radio (so you don’t get dropped service as you drive).
Like Sirius XM, it shares some of its revenue with the car makers.
Tuesday, MOG announced deals with Tweddle and Airbiquity, which are actively selling smartphone platforms to the car companies. MOG will be part of their platforms.
Source: MOG
