Mog, a music-centric blogging network that launched back in 2006, is evolving once again. The site has relaunched its homepage at Mog.com to serve as an authoritative destination site for music news. It has lofty goals, aspiring to become something akin to a ‘Huffington Post for music’ with a constant stream of content that lures visitors to come back multiple times a day. Coming up with that much quality content isn’t normally easy or cheap, but MOG has at least one ace in the hole: its entire editoral staff consists of only six people, and its contributing authors aren’t getting paid – they’re just writing about what they love.
MOG has built up a thriving network of bloggers over the years, who produce upwards of 5,000 music-related blog posts a week. Most of these bloggers are found on MOG itself, using the site’s own publishing tools to share with other members (called MOGers). The site has also forged deals with around 300 external blogs, driving traffic to them by syndicating portions of their content on MOG in return for allowing MOG to serve as their ad network. Between all of these blogs, MOG sees around 5.7 million unique visitors and 40 million page views a month.
Before now, MOG has largely failed to capitalize on its expanding base of bloggers – users browsing its homepage would be shown the most recent posts, with no system present to filter for quality or subject matter. As the site has grown, this stream of posts has become nearly unusable (some of MOG’s 5,000 posts are not written by particularly adept writers), which had led to a poor user experience. To put it bluntly, nobody ever really visited the MOG homepage again after seeing it for the first time.
Now MOG is looking to take advantage of the content its users are producing. The new homepage features around two dozen widgets, each of which will focus on a different topic in music news. A handful of these – namely the top news stories for the day – will always remain at the top of the page, but users will be free to rearrange or remove the remainder of the widgets, which focus on topics including album reviews, upcoming music festivals, and must-see music videos. Each of these is created by the site’s human editors, who cull through posts on the MOG network and pick out the best ones, tweaking the headlines as needed to appeal to a large audience.
Beyond the homepage, users can now browse through a section dedicated to other blog posts, but unlike the old system (which forced users to wade through junky content), stories will now be surfaced using an algorithm based on the popularity and reputation of their writers. Users will also be able to vote up their favorite posts, giving less established bloggers a chance to make it to the spotlight. The interface is getting an overhaul to match its impressive (but still mythical) music streaming service, which is still in the works but will not appear for at least another few months.
MOG isn’t going to be the only company vying to be the music world’s news site of choice – competitors include sites like Pitchfork and Stereogum as well as old standbys like Billboard. But MOG has a leg up on more traditional sites because it has such a large flow of new content that it can provide without hiring a team of dedicated writers. So even if the road to popularity is long, MOG can probably just sustain itself until its competitors die out.
In honor of the site’s relaunch, MOG has also put together a rap battle song (embedded below), written by founder David Hyman and performed by Sam F. And while I’m no rap critic, it’s not half bad.
All the best to MOG once again
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Wasn’t aware of MOG, will have to take a look.
Jason: Is the ‘Huffington Post for music’ analogy yours or MOG’s? Either way, its certainly a nice compliment for HuffPo.
Doesn’t the Huffington Post rely on trusted voices (intellectuals, celebs, journos, etc) whereas MOG will highlight content from amateurs who never had the inclination to start their own music blog? Seems like a major difference. Redesign looks nice though.
cool
Oh, I get it, it’s like Huffington Post because “its contributing authors aren’t getting paid.”
cool, really cool I have to say. “The Huffington Post of Music” hmmm, yeah a good idea. I guess they rely on Ads for revenues.
this is journalism: Neko Case Kills it at the 9:30 Club?
yikes.
It’s been brought up: if authors aren’t getting paid, i’d expect the content quality to be pretty erratic.
this article is not researched. it is a reprint of the press release. irresponsible journalism again, techcrunch. this is why the music industry will always see TC as “just a blog”- Much more research needed. Writer clearly doesn’t understand Mog. Arrington: less PR reprints, please. ‘else we’ll just call you techmeme.
post script: i should clarify…that i’m holding the press release right now. no difference between the release and this “article”
boooooo
That’s funny, because I never got the press release.
Not sure I’d compare to Pitchfork and Stereogum who produce mostly original content and are pure publishers. MOG is an aggregator pulling content from blogs that are in their ad network.
Last design must have sucked. 40M pageviews on 5M uniques is pretty low.
I started using MOG before the redesign and I have to agree that I never, ever used the homepage (even forgot what it looked like) before now. I really like the redesign!
Looks like some of the goods are still being worked out on the new site with the MOG-o-Matic (kind of like the Last.fm scrobbler), but I really like the look of the homepage. One of the cool things about MOG is that the community is pretty engaged, so hopefully this helps some more Moggers get noticed and connect. Looking forward to using it!
The old design did really suck…
The last design did really suck…
I love the new look – how cool are the “remix fix” and “cover up” sections. I’m really excited to dive in.
Hey, this is Sam F. , the guy that rapped and produced the Mog battle rap song. You can check out more of my music at http://www.mysp...samfproductions
Jason I’m no web sleuth but these two articles/copies of the press release appeared on the 14th, well before you posted your “story” of course they’re identical.
http://cwebnews...haul_looks.html
http://www.cove...tafa/blog/27084
The designer rocks… (OK, so he’s a friend of mine)
http://www.rolf...nson.com/design
MOG stinks, wish you would stop sucking their dick so hard. I can’t trust TechCrunch anymore, it appears. Journalism fail.
Jason, you probably just asked David Hyman what he wanted you to write, and he had his PR person send you this… yes?