Following months of rumours Beats confirms the purchase of online music streaming service MOG for an undisclosed sum to the USA Today newspaper.
The companies give no further details of the acquisition as MOG CEO David Hyman says "the addition of MOG's music service to the Beats portfolio will provide a truly end-to-end music experience."
Founded in 2005, MOG offers over 16 million songs (in 320-kilobit MP3 format) through its website, Facebook app and subscription services on LG and Samsung devices. While similar to Spotify, MOG lacks one thing-- user numbers. Active MOG users amount to around 500000, while Spotify has around 3 million paying subscribers.
It makes sense for Beats to buy a music service-- or rather, it makes sense for HTC, who bought a majority stake in Beats for $309m back in August 2011. And let's not forget, as Android devices become increasingly similar, vendors continually look for services setting their hardware apart from the competition.
So, Beats wants to sell music-as-a-service. HTC wants to sell more phones. Will the combination of two markets turn the fortune of a struggling service around?
