Log On, Listen, Blog, Discuss

When you hear a catchy new song, it's hard not to tell your friends about it. The opposite is also true: it's nearly impossible to discuss a song when you haven't heard it first. Yet there are plenty of blogs and Web sites where music is discussed under the assumption that other bloggers know how a song, album or artist sounds.

This week, I dived into the music blogging world of MOG.com, a Web site where enthusiasts can read, blog and network with one another. Starting today, this site will integrate with Rhapsody, the subscription-based music service, so that MOG users, or MOGGERS, can simultaneously blog about and listen to millions of songs that fuel their online discussions.

MOG Inc. prides itself on working as a destination for people who hope to discuss music tastes and opinions, like TripAdvisor.com works for travelers. MOG's first public beta, or test version, came out about a year and a half ago.

Its use of a subscription model comes at a time when CD profits are lagging and larger social-networking sites are negotiating with record labels to incorporate music streaming. Plenty of people still prefer purchasing music a la Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store, where there aren't restrictions due to streaming or subscriptions.

Along with built-in Rhapsody, this newly enhanced version of MOG includes other improvements, such as a better search engine and a speedy tool that generates personal profiles for each MOG user according to his or her musical tastes.

I was granted early access to MOG's revamped site and was most impressed by its fast search tool, which works just like the Spotlight search in Apple's operating system. Results are narrowed with each typed letter and returned in neatly divided categories. Best of all, music results came back as fast as if they were on my hard drive instead of various MOG pages and Rhapsody's database.

MOG also does a good job of marrying its contents with Rhapsody in a way that isn't overly obvious; tiny Play icons beside song titles can be selected to start hearing a tune through the Rhapsody player, which hums along in the background, and similar icons add songs to playlists in one step.

But for a site that prides itself on appealing to music enthusiasts, I found certain genres much more represented than others. The rock music category, for example, had plenty of related posts and coinciding Rhapsody music, but the classical music section was almost nonexistent and country tunes were poorly represented. I typed 'Bach' into the search box, expecting to be flooded with results, but saw no music and only one post by a MOG user about why she thought Bach was a great composer. The company says it will fix this in the next couple of months.

Unlimited Rhapsody access costs $13 monthly and is offered free for the first 14 days. But, like all subscription models, it blocks access to music if you don't pay this monthly fee. MOGGERS who don't want to pay or don't plan on using Rhapsody as much can choose from two free options: one that allows users to listen to 25 songs a month and another that only allows free 30-second clips of song.

MOGGERS can upload their own MP3s within blog posts on the site. But linking to Rhapsody songs was easier and faster.

I got started by clicking a giant 'Magic Button' icon on the MOG site. This installed MOG-O-MATIC, a tool that automatically searched my computer's hard drive for all of my music files, then indexed them and created a profile of my music taste on a personalized My MOG page. This tool was also available in the first version of MOG but is 10 times as fast now, indexing 10,000 songs an hour compared with 1,000 songs previously.

I liked that MOG-O-MATIC did some page-creation work for me, making a list of the songs I listened to most recently -- regardless of what program I used to listen to the song (iTunes, Windows Media Player or Rhapsody). Another list that was automatically generated from my music showed which artist was best represented in my collection. If you don't want the world to know about your Barry Manilow obsession, this list can be altered to fudge the truth.

Because MOG-O-MATIC scans your entire music collection, it knows what music you like. A Recommendations page shows you what other MOGGERS with similar tastes are listening to, helping you discover new tunes. I found these suggestions to be pretty accurate, and even discovered a great song on another MOGGER's recommended playlist called 'Summer Teeth' by Wilco. I checked out the page belonging to the MOGGER who created this playlist, and found other tunes that were in line with my musical taste.

Using Rhapsody, I played entire Web pages of recommended songs with one click. Likewise, entire music collections belonging to other people can be played the same way, as long as you have the right Rhapsody account to play that many songs.

I wrote a blog post on MOG about the newest album from 'Fountains of Wayne,' and it automatically included a Play button icon, enabling the song I wrote about to play along with my post. This auto-linking is done with fill-in-the-blank boxes that tag each post with music.

MOG isn't trying to be a social-networking site that enables all things. Instead, it focuses on one thing, music, and successfully improves the way people discuss, share and discover music online.

当你听到一首好听的新歌时，总是忍不住要和朋友们谈起它。不过反过来想想看，如果这首歌你连听都没听过，怎么去和别人讨论呢。不过现在仍有很多博客和网站都专门讨论音乐，就好像其他人完全了解一首歌、一张专辑乃至一个艺术家到底表现得怎么样。

本周，我一头扎进了MOG.com这个音乐博客世界，在这个网站上音乐爱好者们可以浏览、撰写博文或彼此交流。从今天开始，MOG.com将把为订户提供音乐服务的Rhapsody整合进来，这样MOG的用户，即MOGGERS就可以在聆听上百万首歌曲的同时撰写博文，来为他们的在线讨论寻找新的素材了。

一直让MOG Inc.深感自豪的是，它给音乐爱好者提供了一个讨论音乐品位和观点的平台，其意义堪比TripAdvisor.com网站之于旅行者。MOG首个公开发行的beta版是大约一年半以前面世的。

MOG采取了订阅服务的模式，眼下CD出版业盈利状况不佳，更大的社交网站则在与唱片公司商谈添加网上收听的事宜。有许多人仍钟意于到苹果公司(Apple Inc.)的iTunes Store音乐商店购买音乐，不受网上收听或订阅与否的限制。

除整合了Rhapsody之外，这一升级版的MOG还做了不少改进，包括更好的搜索引擎，以及能根据每个人的音乐品位快速生成个人档案的工具等等。

我获准提前试用了改版的MOG，登录后给我留下最深刻印象的莫过于其高速的搜索工具，它的表现有点像苹果操作系统中的Spotlight搜索工具。随着字母的键入，搜索结果不断收窄，而且还对结果巧妙地进行了分类。最棒的一点是，显示搜索结果的速度快得就像是从我的硬盘里直接读取，彷佛根本没有在MOG的网页和Rhapsody的数据库中游走了几番。

MOG还有一点做得很好，那就是将自己的内容和Rhapsody融合得天衣无缝。在每一首歌的歌名旁都有一个小小的"播放"键，只要点击就可以通过Rhapsody的播放器在后台播放音乐了，你还可以利用类似的图标只需一步就把喜欢的歌曲添加到播放列表中。

虽然MOG标榜自己为音乐爱好者服务，但我发现某些音乐风格所占的比例显然过高了一些。以摇滚乐为例，我们能轻易地搜到许多此类博文和Rhapsody音频文件，但古典音乐却屈指可数，乡村音乐也少得可怜。我在搜索框里输入了"巴赫"，本以为会有一大堆结果像潮水那样涌来，但根本没有找到任何音频文件，只有MOG的一位女用户撰写的一篇文章，讲述她为什么认为巴赫是个伟大的音乐家。该公司表示将在几个月内解决这一问题。

在最初14天可以不受限制地使用Rhapsody，若想继续这一待遇则需每月缴纳13美元。和所有的订阅网站一样，如果你不按月交费，那么你就无法使用这一音乐资源。那些不愿花钱、或没打算把Rhapsody功能用到极致的MOGGERS可以从以下两种免费方式中选择其一：一个是每月只听25首歌，另一个则是每首歌只听30秒。

MOGGERS可以在博文中上传自己的MP3文件，不过直接链接Rhapsody的歌曲却更方便，速度也更快。

一开始，通过点击"魔键"(Magic Button)图标，我安装了一个名为MOG-O-MATIC的工具，它可以自动搜索我硬盘中的所有音乐文件，然后将它们建立索引，并按照我的喜好建立一个个性化档案My MOG。最初版本的MOG就包含这个工具，但现在速度提高到了原来的十倍，它可以在1小时内为10,000首歌建立索引，远远多于从前的1,000首。

我很高兴地看到MOG-O-MATIC为我的页面赋予了个性化色彩，它列出了我最近一段时间听歌的清单，而不去管我是用iTunes、Windows Media Player还是Rhapsody来播放的音乐。另一张清单则列出了在我收藏中出现频率最高的艺术家都是何许人也。如果你不想让全世界都知道你是美国老牌歌星巴瑞•曼尼洛(Barry Manilow)的粉丝，那么你可以在这份名单上做做手脚。

由于MOG-O-MATIC搜索你全部的音乐收藏，所以它自然对你喜欢什么了如指掌。有一个推荐网页显示其他和你有着相近口味的MOGGERS正在听什么音乐，这有助于发现新歌。我发现它们的建议还挺正点，我甚至在其他MOGGER的推荐清单里发现了一首相当棒的歌曲──维尔科(Wilco)演唱的《Summer Teeth》。我查看了一下这位MOGGER的网页，发现此人的音乐偏好和我非常相近。

通过使用Rhapsody，我只需点击一次就可以播放页面内的所有推荐歌曲。同样，其他人的音乐收藏也可以用这种方式播放，前提是你拥有可用的Rhapsody帐户来完成这个操作。

我在MOG上写了一篇关于Fountains of Wayne最新专辑的博客。MOG在文章中自动附上了播放键，让音乐和乐评融合到了一起。若想实现这个功能，在选择框里打个钩就行了。

MOG没想成为一家无所不包的社交网站。相反，它只关注音乐，以及改善人们在线讨论、分享及发掘好音乐的方式。
关键字:双语新闻
生词表: