14 DAY TRIAL // Being in the online music services, especially streaming services, market is not for the faint of heart. With companies going under almost as often as new ones pop up and with very few people actually making money from it, there seems to be little incentive to enter the market. Yet, recently launched music-streaming service Mog managed to raise a second round of funding totaling $9.5 million, barely a couple of months after going live.
This adds nicely to the $12.5 million Mog.com has raised so far, though it already had a music blog network before launching the streaming service, so it's not clear what part of that was used specifically for the latter. The latest round came last summer, when it got $5 million.
The money will be used to add a mobile component to the service and expand in the UK. Mog.com's streaming service was met with positive reviews when it launched last December and it is now seen as a major threat, perhaps the only one, to Spotify, the popular European music-streaming service that is yet to launch in the US.
Mog hasn't released any usage or subscriber numbers for the $5-a-month all-you-can-eat service, but says it has a 17-percent conversion rate for its free trial users. Spotify is free but ad-supported, and also has a premium service for £9.99 in the UK and €9.99 elsewhere in Europe, which gets rid of the ads.
Mog's lack of any mobile app is seen as a deterrent in its getting a wider audience and this is the main focus in the short-term future. Still, the company says that, when mobile apps arrive, the price may go up as well because of licensing issues. After the mobile launch, coming in the next few months, Mog is looking to conquer the UK market, where Spotify has been incredibly popular and enjoys a solid position. Mog wants to launch in the UK by the end of the second quarter.