I have a both Pandora One subscription and a Mog Primo subscription. 

Both services do a very good job and both I believe are fairly priced.

• Pandora One: $36.00 USD/year : Music Discovery @ 192kbps
• Mog Primo: $9.99 USD/month : infinite and select-able 320kbps and mobile download.

I have no guilt spending this money. The opportunity cost saving, pleasure, and work effort stimulation these services provide is well worth the money. Still your probably asking why I have two separate service accounts or….

Hey what about?:

• Spotify: because its service requires a native player which is not very well supported on Linux Ubuntu I did not like it. Also Spotify is marketing material kind of sucks. They somehow turned me off from the beginning
• Rdio: I truly believe Rdio is no better in sound quality then Pandora One. Rdio sounds more “punchy” but I think they just boost/amp the signal. Basically Mog w/o the quality. They have an amazing UI. There marketing material is fantastic. There sound quality is OK (certainly better than free Pandora). Their social / follow feature are the best.

This is not to say any of these technologies suck. They are utterly impressive to what we used to have and are much more cost effective than iTunes. However the expectations are much higher. Consequently some more critique:

Pandora is like the USA. Its the oldest “free” streaming music service that most people know. Its everywhere. It was amazing music to the masses when it was released…. 

However Pandora’s sound quality sucketh asseth compared to Mog and Spotify. Particularly Mog which is freakin outstanding. I offer you a simple comparison.

1. Tune into Pandora to one of your favorite stations
2. Take note of what song is playing
3. Pause the song
4. Sign up for Mog if you haven’t
5. Play the song in Mog. Take note how you can select your song.
6. Notice the amazing difference (which is considerably noticeable even with a Pandora One @192kbps account!)

So Pandora must suck right? NO NO NO. Pandora’s automated Music Genome or whatever they call it works for 90% of the population (personal anecdotal qualitative analysis) and is still the best Music Discovery. Mog “Artist Radio” comes no where close. If you have no idea what you like or are not a super music lover I seriously recommend using Pandora or Rdio first. Pandora helped me find what I liked and saved me from screwing with playlists and whatnot. Really. The people who bitch that Pandora plays the same stuff over and over are just too lazy to make another station. That being said Rdio is also has fantastic music discovery.

Mog is kick ass because of its music quality is CD quality, albums selection, semi-descent music discovery, mobile music download (good for airplanes). Annoying audiophiles will claim its still not good enough but it really is pretty much 16 bit 44khz which is what most music is still recorded at. Any better and you really really need a good sound system to notice. What I like best about Mog is it seems its trying to optimize for audiophiles and they seem to be getting better much quicker than spotify…. I hope they do.