Record labels fund music discovery site MOG [Updated]

Updated

Some of the early music discovery startups, like Imeem, Pandora, Last.fm and iLike, now have many millions of people using their services every month. MOG, a standalone desktop music player and music fan site perhaps most similar to social network-focused iLike, isn’t too far behind — it has around a million unique users a month, it says.

So maybe the record labels investing in MOG will figure out some interesting ways to help it pull forward. Universal Music Investments and Sony BMG Music Investments, along with The Angels Forum 74, have just put $2.8 million into the Berkeley, Calif. company. That’s on top of the $3.2 million it already raised through two angel rounds.

MOG already has good relations with the music industry, presumably. It was founded in 2005 by David Hyman, the former chief executive of Gracenote, the album data company that is getting bought by Sony for $260 million.

[Update: As one commenter, filtermagnet, says, the MOG desktop application scans your hard drive to find songs and give you recommendations for similar songs you might like. The company’s investors now include labels that sue people for downloading music, which makes filtermagnet worried that maybe these labels will use MOG to access their, er, freely downloaded tracks and sue them or whatever. Maybe, but these labels have also recently shown a willingness to partner with others startups, like Imeem, and freely stream songs over the web. I think the labels invested in MOG now in another bid to somehow keep themselves relevant on the web. If anything, it seems they would want to experiment with streaming albums on MOG or other ideas for helping the company attract usrs, rather than scare peoplpe away through creepy spy tactics.]