arcade fire

Mega Music Meta-Battle: MOG vs. Spotify Reviews

by David D. on September 18, 2011

Spotify’s July launch in the US quickly heated up the market for music on demand.  Existing players Rdio and MOG both announced free service tiers last week, where previously they only offered free trials.  And this week, they’re all going to the ball with Facebook.

MOG, in particular, is on fire.  They introduced a slick new HTML 5 app in July, and just debuted a desktop client for the Mac.  Type Spotify vs. MOG into Google and you will get over 350,000 results.  We picked a few of the most thorough and thoughtful reviews to highlight here.

Sound + Vision – Streaming Deathmatch: Spotify Premium vs. MOG

You always want what you can’t get.  Al Griffin points out that Europe swooning over Spotify while the US was locked out made the Swedish beauty that much more alluring.

His review divides the battle into six rounds, and awards five of them to MOG, with a tie in the device support category.  Giving the PC/Mac Support category to MOG seems a little odd, since Spotify has desktop clients for both, and MOG is still working on a PC version.  However, MOG does have an excellent web app, while Spotify has none.

Computer Audiophile – MOG v. Spotify Part I and Part II

Chris Connaker provides the most thorough comparison of these services that I’ve been able to find, and his focus on audio quality is dear to the heart of MMT.

OS News – Spotify vs Rdio vs MOG

This one is for all you Rdio fans out there.  Unfortunately, the news isn’t good.  Rdio subscriber Eugenia Loli-Queru looks at all three services, and decides to ditch Rdio.  For him, it’s between MOG and Spotify.  Seems to me that Rdio is destined to become the Sprint to MOG and Spotify’s AT&T and Verizon (or RC Cola to Coke and Pepsi — whatever works for you.)

I have not tested Rdio for two reasons: 1) how much time do you think I have, people?; and 2) from everything I’ve read and heard, Rdio lags behind the leaders in the two areas most important to me: audio quality and catalog depth.

Audio Quality, AirPlay, and Bitrategate

The kbps listed above are the highest available from each service.  You need the premium flavor of Spotify to get 320 kbps streams from the desktop, mobile is capped at 160 kpbs.  Although Spotify says they are working to upgrade all of their tracks to 320 kbps, premium customers are still finding many tracks streaming at 160 kbps.  After a prolonged pause (the upgrades began in 2009), the pace seems to have quickened recently — check out this story for more on “bitrategate”.

MOG has AirPlay built-in to its Mac app, so you can stream to your home stereo from there or from an iOS device using AirPort Express or AppleTV.  Or you can just plug in your iPhone/Pod/Pad to your dock or home stereo to get music in your listening room.

Because Spotify limits 320 kbps streams to it’s desktop client, getting the highest quality audio to your home stereo is more problematic. Unless your computer is connected directly to your stereo, you will need a third-party app such as Airfoil to send audio to AirPort Express or AppleTV over your Wi-Fi network.

I found that MOG streaming over AirPlay produced consistently better audio quality than Spotify over AirFoil.  Of course, neither service will do for critical listening.  But for music discovery or casual listening, MOG sounds better, and gives you more and better options to get their highest quality streams.

One advantage Spotify has over the services is response time.  Tracks begin playing almost instantly, and rarely choke or sputter.  There is a price to pay for this: some of your bandwidth will be used to serve cached songs to other Spotify users.  Spotify’s use of peer-to-peer networking concerns some customers, here’s what it says under “use of computational resources” in the T&Cs:

Spotify has a right to allow the Spotify Software Application and the Spotify Service to utilize the processor, bandwidth and storage hardware on your computer or other relevant device for the limited purpose of facilitating the communication and transmission of content and other data or features to you and other users of the Spotify Software Application and the Spotify Service, and to facilitate the operation of the network on which the Spotify Software Application and the Spotify Service runs.

~ Spotify – Terms and Conditions of Use

Finding your music, or where’s the (arcade) fire?

Both MOG and Spotify have pretty impressive catalogs.  I decided to test them out by building a playlist dedicated to the September harvest moon, and was a bit surprised to find all the songs I searched for on both services.

A little more searching turned up a few gaps on MOG.  I found all of the Goldheart Assembly albums, but “Oh Really” from the So Long St. Christopher EP was missing.  Both services had Under the Table and Dreaming from DMB, but MOG’s album was missing two of the tracks.

WhileI found gaps on MOG, Spotify has some gaping holes.  MOG has had (it’s now being updated) the entire Pink Floyd catalog.  Spotify: one live album from 1995.  MOG has most of Peter Gabriel’s catalog, including the 2010 collection of covers: Scratch My Back.  Spotify: a couple cuts from soundtrack albums. MOG has both 19 and 21 from Adele. Spotify: 19 only.  And so on.

I’m not sure how the track counts are compiled, but I noticed a lot of duplication, and a fair amount of filler in the listings.  I can understand different mixes and remasters showing up as multiple tracks, but MOG lists 40 tracks for “Billie Jean”.  Eighteen are from Michael Jackson, the rest are covers, sound-alikes, and karaoke cuts.  Spotify is the clear winner of the “Billie Jean” battle, with a whopping 71 tracks.

And the winner is…

MOG wins: audio quality, catalog quality, web interface, radio features, music discovery

Spotify wins: integration with local files, catalog quantity, windows desktop, streaming performance

Editor’s Choice: MOG

Big Box of Disclaimers

Your choice will depend on what’s most important to you.  Catalog quality is a subjective issue, so check each service to make sure the music you want most is available.  If you like to listen to music on your work computer but can’t install apps, then Spotify’s lack of a web interface will be a problem.

If Facebook is successful in popularizing these services, then streaming performance could become more of an issue, and Spotify’s peer-to-peer approach gives them a substantial advantage.  For now, I like MOG so much that I have decided to drop my premium subscription to Spotify and become a MOG affilliate.

MOG is currently available only in the US, so that makes the decision easy for a lot of the world.  This article is geared towards US readers, and Spotify’s catalog and features vary by country.  Artists and tracks are continually being added to and removed from each service, and there are multiple flavors of free and premium offerings for both services.

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Spotify: future of music or final nail in the coffin?

by David D. on September 8, 2011

One day in the not-too-distant future, we hope to give everybody instant access to all the music in the world.

~ Spotify

 

What do YOU think?  Take the quick 3-question survey here.

If you live in Europe or read MMT, you have probably been using or hearing about Spotify for a few years.  Spotify landed in the US on July 14, 2011, with the free version available by invitation only*, and premium versions available immediately for $4.99 or $9.99 per month.  (All the features you want are in the $9.99 version.)

Spotify is the celestial jukebox done right: over 15 million tracks available on-demand and almost instantly, with 320 kbps streams available for some songs (more on that in a future article).  Apple is notoriously tight-lipped, so who knows what they will be offering later this year.  But iCloud and the iTunes Match service (as announced) look feeble by comparison.

Not everyone is thrilled.  You won’t find Arcade Fire on Spotify, or any of the usual suspects: Metallica, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, AC/DC and Led Zeppelin.  And some artists who play nice with the other streaming services have pulled their material from Spotify, complaining about the fractions of a penny paid per stream.

The income streams to the artists are affected massively and therefore that accelerates the downward spiral, which eventually will lead to artists not being able to record music the way it should be recorded. Ultimately, in some cases, it will completely kill a lot of smaller bands that are already struggling to make ends meet.

~ “Century Media Pull Their Repertoire from Spotify!”

While the major labels and pop music may be able to reap a real income stream from Spotify simply due to the sheer volume of streams, the Spotify model is not financially sustainable for any indie niche label. As the industry moves more in this direction (competitor Napster, for example, only yields slightly more, about 1 cent per stream), it will simply choke the indie labels out of business.

~ Brian Brandt, “Is the Spotify Model Really the Answer?”

Spotify responded by saying they were “launched out of a desire to develop a better, more convenient and legal alternative to music piracy.  Spotify now monetises an audience the large majority of whom were downloading illegally (and therefore not making any money for the industry) before Spotify was available.”

What do you think?  If you have been using Spotify, take the survey and let us know how you feel about it as a musician, or as a listener.

*If you haven’t tried Spotify yet, you should.  Although they still require invitations, it looks like they’re now being sent as soon as you request one.  If not, Bob Lefsetz still has some available here, or email me and I’ll send you one.  Get on it!

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2010 Music Sales: CDs Cave and Digital Drags as Vinyl gains Velocity

by David D. on January 12, 2011

Billboard reported that US Album sales dropped 12.8% to 326.2 million units for the 52 weeks ending January 2nd.  That compares to 373.9 million units sold in 2009.  Digging into the numbers:

CD Sales > Down nearly 20% for the fourth year in a row

Digital Tracks > 1% increase to 1.17 billion units

Digital Album Downloads > 13% increase to 86.3 million units, or about 26.5% of all album sales

Taken together, the combined sales of albums and track equivalent albums (TEA: 10 tracks = 1 album) fell 9.5% to 443.4 million units, down from 489.8 million units in 2009.  Soundscan reported that only 13 albums scanned more than one million units: a new low, and down from 22 in 2009.

Viva la Vinyl!

Although it is a drop in the bit bucket when looking at unit sales, Rolling Stone reports that vinyl sales increased by 14% in 2010, with 2.8 million units sold.  Although that’s just over one-half of 1% of TEA sales, it represents the best year for vinyl since 1991.

The best-selling vinyl album of 2010 was the Beatles’ Abbey Road, and new albums with the best sales were Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs, the Black Keys’ Brothers, Vampire Weekend’s Contra, and the National’s High Violet.

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Arcade Fire at MSG: The Aftermath

by David D. on August 10, 2010

Arcade Fire Test Pattern

Individual videos for many of the songs from Arcade Fire’s concert at Madison Square Garden last week are now available on their Vevo Channel.  The live show garnered excellent reviews, as did Terry Gilliam’s webcast production.

From MMT HQ, the sound and video quality were both superb, unfortunately, they were not always in sync.  Over Verizon FiOS, the video would occasionally shudder, then fail to catch up. Early on, the Arcade Fire Test Pattern made a couple of appearances.  Still, a pretty amazing event — we have certainly come a long way from when watching a coffee pot over the web was a big deal.

Check out the MMT contribution to the photo gallery, and go to the MSG site for a set of concert pics.  Their new album, “The Suburbs” is available in several formats, including FLAC and Apple Lossless from the Arcade Fire site.

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Arcade Fire Streaming Live from Madison Square Garden Tonight: 8/5/2010

by David D. on August 5, 2010

Arcade Fire kicks off a new “Unstaged” concert series from YouTube, American Express, and Vevo.  The concert starts at 10:00 PM (ET) and will be directed by Terry Gilliam.  You can view the concert here.  From the Official YouTube Blog:

You can also be part of the show via the “Share Your Suburb” photo project. Since Arcade Fire’s new album is called The Suburbs, they’re encouraging fans to upload pictures of their own leafy neighborhoods, including snapshots of front porches, tree-lined streets and grocery store parking lots — anything that reflects your hometown. The band will feature their favorite submissions onstage during their live performance, so go ahead and submit your images here.

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Free Friday: Arcade Fire Edition

by David D. on May 27, 2010

Arcade Fire’s next album The Suburbs will be released on the 2nd of August in the UK, and the 3rd in US and Canada.  Brothers Will and Win Butler introduced two of the songs on NPR this morning: “Month of May” and the title track “The Suburbs.”  Will described them as representing “two of four poles” on the album.

“The Suburbs” starts off as  a folksy shuffle with a prominent honky tonk piano track, while “Month of May” is guitar-driven rocker, slightly reminiscent of Neil Young’s “Rockin in the Free World.”  Will mentioned “more electronic stuff” as the third pole, while pole no. 4 was lost in conversation.

Overall, the new album is described as less layered and more upbeat than their first two.  Of course, being more upbeat than Funeral is kind of like being chubbier than Calista Flockhart.  Although Funeral was released to critical acclaim in 2004,  mainstream popularity arrived last year when Spike Jonze used  a re-recorded version of “Wake Up” in a trailer for Where the Wild Things Are.

The album is available for pre-order from the Arcade Fire site in several flavors including digital, vinyl, and CD.  All versions include premium digital tracks in 320 kbps MP3, FLAC or Apple Lossless.  And pre-orders get an instant download of “Month of May” and “The Suburbs.”

Your free mp3 is a full Arcade Fire concert from 2007 courtesy of NPR.  As explained at the beginning of the recording, the show opens with “Wake Up”, which they take off-stage, off mic, and out of tune.  Things get better once they find their way back to the stage.

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