Music Business Journal: MOG’s Anu Kirk

A Berklee music business/management student interviews the lead product manager of the cloud-based subscription service.

Ben Scudder

April 28, 2011

Services like Rhapsody charge a monthly subscription fee to grant users, with browsers or mobile apps, access to an extensive music catalogue. The content is stored on a server somewhere other than the user's hard drive (i.e. "the cloud"). There is no need to safe-keep a personal music collection or move it around devices. MOG is an example of a pioneering cloud-based service, and we wanted to know more. Anu Kirk is the lead product manager of Mobile Content.

MBJ: What is MOG doing to acquire licenses/content? Where do you feel MOG has the most potential for growth in terms of its catalogue

Anu Kirk: MOG uses a company called MediaNet as the provider for our catalogue. We also have our own in-house licensing team of people with some legal background, some label background, and we proactively reach out to specific labels that we want to make sure that we have on board. This process is based on feedback from our users, who request such content, but also on our knowledge of the industry and our desire to bring in, so to speak, cool labels. We reach out and ask these labels if they'd like to be part of MOG. We have contracts, or terms that we offer them, and we send out an agreement, and hope that they sign.