About a month and a hlaf ago I decided it was time to give a streaming music service a shot. Rdio had just launched with a nifty little free trial so I jumped in there right away, but the selection was severely limited. I went to MOG, which started out okay, until I realized just how much better the Rdio service is.

For starters, Rdio has a vastly superior interface. Every god damn time I open MOG I have to sign in, which is bad enough, but then I can’t just open the player from that sign in page. Yes, I can point my browser to the player location, but I do not want to. I also do not want another browser window open. Seriously, what decade is this? For all the goodness that MOG brings – a nice library, good quality, sturdy streaming, the ability to download and play stuff later – they are way behind the times with regard to design.

The saddest part, much like the current TV streaming, is that MOG just might be the best around. From what I’ve seen of the other services, they’re just as bad, maybe worse, and that just isn’t going to cut it for a service I will use every single day.

I constantly struggle to find new music. Yes, there are a million resources out there – blogs, fan sites, news and reviews, venues, torrents, etc. etc. – but there’s so much music in the world that a lot of it ends up sounding the same, and I don’t want something that always sounds the same.

I decided I was going to try a streaming service for the sheer amount of music available. Pandora isn’t on-demand so that was out. I gave Rdio a shot because it was free and had just launched but their selection was woefully slim (they were missing big names like The Arcade Fire among some lesser stuff I was hoping for). From there I turned to MOG and I’ve been fairly impressed. Their selection is good, the iPhone app is passable, as is their web-based player, but I don’t think I’ve discovered all that much.

MOG does have a feature on the web player that allows you to broaden your horizons by including similar artists to the one at the top of your playlist, but it’s just not diverse. It’s the same thing with Pandora. What I want is some sort of discovery mode, where the player throws a wide selection of stuff at you, based not just on the music you’re listening to, but what other people interested in that selection listen to. I would love if it there was even some sort of blacklist feature so that you wouldn’t get the same old mix.

As a for instance, I’m listening to The Hold Steady right now. The similar artist list is about what you’d expect – Modest Mouse, A.C. Newman, Spoon, White Rabbits – all bands that someone listening to The Hold Steady would probably say, “Hey, you’d like these guys, too.” I don’t need that kind of guarantee, though. I want to hear a mix of stuff I might not like and might like and might be surprised I like, and I haven’t found a music service that provides that.

I probably won’t renew my MOG subscription beyond a month because I’m not getting a whole lot more from it than I can get from a Pandora. The on-demand is nice, but the web-player is a little clunky, and I have plenty of music to get through on my own.