Dr Dre’s Beats breaking into the streaming game

The Beats brand, founded by Hip Hop artist Dr Dre and now with HTC as its majority share holder, has announced the acquisition of music streaming service MOG.

Using a platform similar to the ever more popular Spotify, MOG offers a library of some 16 million songs, listenable to for free on the official website and its Facebook page. However, those wishing to do so without adverts or with unlimited downloads, need to fork out a few bucks a month. It seems likely that with the high quality image being pushed by the Beats brand and its links with HTC, MOG will see a swathe of cross promotion.

Those buying up HTC handsets in the future will get free MOG trials, or at the very least come preloaded with its application. Beats headphones could also see promo codes for the service, or perhaps come with accompanying literature to attract more listeners.

According to the current COO of Beats, Luke Wood, the company had attempted to team up with several music services, but the inclusion of high quality tracks on MOG was the real selling point, since it offers its entire catalogue of music at 320kbps. While this is far and beyond what the casual listener needs – many now simply rip low to average quality copies from Youtube – it does emphasise the quality angle that Beats has been pushing for since its inception.

Competing with the likes of Spotify and Rdio, MOG is less global than the others, only offering its service to Australia and the US. Being well established there however, does give it a bit of an advantage over Spotify which has only recently made itself available to those citizens.

Kitguru says: It'll be interesting to see if MOG ends up being ‘brought to you by Beats,' or if it will be renamed to fit in more with HTC's handsets. If championed by the phone maker, it will find itself competing with other services like iTunes and Samsung's Music Hub too.

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