Android Subscription Music Services

[erwos]

Anyone ever used of the subscription music services on Android? I need some recommendations.

My AT&T contract is due up in a few months, and I'd like to finally be rid of the Zune HD that I always carry around with me. I love the Zune Pass, but I'm not a great fan of any of the WP7 phones currently available, especially with the high-end Android phones that are getting released.

Spotify sounds great, but no US launch yet...

 

[shortylickens]

Nope. I prefer to get DRM free MP3's and do whatever I want with them. However I admit being able to sample a wide range of music for a low monthly fee is sort of appealing. If I had an unlimited data plan I'd probably get it just to have more music in my car. I get tired of yanking the SD card out every week and mixing up my music, especially cuz I really dont have very much.

 

[sathyan]

MOG: http://mog.com/promos/overview#mobile
I subscribe to MOG on Roku which provides 320kbps MP3s. It looks like it is available on iOS and Android as well.

 

[zoiks]

If you have your own collection of mp3's you can use subsonic to stream them to your phone. Works great for me. What will be more awesome is when poweramp will start supporting audiogalaxy or subsonic.

 

[erwos]

Not interested in downloading or using MP3s, guys. I get a lot of value out of being able to freely explore artists and albums.

Sathyan: how do you find the selection on MOG? That was one of the things I was concerned about. 320kbps sounds pretty awesome.

 

[Yuriman]

My preferred method is to use Pandora and if I might like an artist, sample their music, and then feed them back into Pandora.

Many of the artists I like are rather obscure, and I can often get their CDs for <$1 on Amazon.

 

[Robert Munch]

I really enjoy using Grooveshark for playing things that I want to hear on the fly by specific request. Slacker's similar to Pandora but, imo the track selections are much better quality wise and i'm also using Sirius for Howard Stern and random music channels that are not offered on Slacker. I won't ever touch Pandora again.

 

[sathyan]

Not interested in downloading or using MP3s, guys. I get a lot of value out of being able to freely explore artists and albums.

Sathyan: how do you find the selection on MOG? That was one of the things I was concerned about. 320kbps sounds pretty awesome.

In a word, excellent. They claim 10 million tracks and I've been able to find most of what I want (and saved myself a few album purchases). Occasionally, they will have an artist but not all of the albums. I know I encountered that once: Alison Krauss' album "Forget About It" was missing but they had her other albums, both earlier and later. They have some obscure music as well. I've been discovering Portuguese fado and they have 3 albums from Ana Moura.
For music discovery there are shared playlists and a "radio" function which is similar to Pandora (I like the idea of Pandora but the sound quality makes it un-listenable)

One caution would be if you are into opera/classical. It is not so easy to find by composer or particular pieces. You end up with various artists collections too often. Better to know the soloist.

MOG offers a free 2 week trial so I would say try it out see if they have artists you like. I did the trial and after 2 weeks there was no way I was going to cancel.