If you’re one of the types that finds it relaxing to listen to music whilst doing other things on a computer, chances are that the majority of your music library is stored on a single computer. However, this can cause complications when you’re out and about, especially when you’re using a computer that’s not your own. What can you do about it?
With Mougg, you can upload your music to their web server and then access it from wherever you are in the world, provided you have an internet connection. With 1GB of free storage space, this isn’t to be sniffed at.
Overview
Mougg is an online web app that allows you to literally access your music from anywhere. Once an account is created, you can immediately begin to upload music to your library and then play it through the web interface on the fly.
Overview
As well as being useful for listening to music when away from your computer, it can also be an efficient backup tool so that your music library will always be accessible, regardless of the state of your computer. Complete with an Android app, it’s also completely mobile and with its great user-interface, it can be a really good replacement to listening to music on your Google Android phone, especially if you’re running low on storage space.
Interface
Mougg is great to look at. It takes some of the design elements of some of the best music plays and brings them to the web. One of the good things about the app is its clear lack of Flash. Most other online music players rely heavily on the technology of Adobe Flash and this can often decrease the performance of the computer overall. Whilst some other apps are quite slow and require pageloads when each action is performed, Mougg bridges the gap between desktop application and web app and acts very much like it would if it were in the form of a desktop application.
Interface
Getting Started
It doesn’t take more than 10 seconds to create a Mougg account and once you’ve entered your name and email address, and entered a password, your account will be created and you’ll be able to login without having to wait for an extra page load.
Registration
You’ll then be taken to the Mougg player where an introductory narration will begin playing which will disappear from your music library when re-accessed. Once this is complete, you can then begin to take advantage of the free 1GB space offered with the free Mougg account.
Managing Music
Now that the account’s been created, you can begin to upload music to the Mougg library. To do this, simply choose the songs you want to upload and they will immediately begin uploading quickly. I found the upload speeds of Mougg to be quite fast and you are updated with a completion percentage so that you can monitor the progress of the upload.
Uploading Music
Once you’ve done this, the music is automatically added to your main library for immediate playback. You can easily edit the details of each song like the title, artist, album etc. to ensure that the information is correct and also view the embedded album artwork.
Playlists
Just like if you were using any desktop music player, Mougg supports playlists! It’s also pretty easy to create them; simply enter a name for it in the sidebar and then click the + button. The playlists are then appended to the sidebar and you can then start dragging songs into them.
Creating Playlists
Though it’s a pretty obvious feature to have, some online music players lack this feature, rendering them less useful than those that offer the functionality – especially to those who often categorise their music into playlists. This also helps to reinforce the gap that is being bridged from desktop app to web app, with the app developers taking a really useful feature of desktop clients and brings them to the web.
Playlist View
Mobile
As well as being available to use in any web browser, Mougg also comes complete with a mobile application for the Android operating system. As I mentioned, this can be a great way of using the service to save up space on cell phones, with all of the music being streamed through the web interface as opposed to being saved on the device itself. The app can stream music through a Wi-Fi network that the phone is connected to and also through a cellular data plan, though I am assuming that this would be significantly slower.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I found Mougg to be pretty useful. Though I imagine that some other people would prefer to use desktop clients to play music when at their personal computer, the app is a great alternative for when you’re out and about and don’t have access to your desktop player. The sleek interface, however, is a credit to the app and the fact that it doesn’t rely on Flash for almost every aspect like some others just proves that the web is truly moving back towards standard web technologies.
The app does actually provide a really huge amount of space for storing music files and since it’s free, it’s definitely worth a try. One problem that I found, though, is the lack of features. For an app like this, I think it needs something more to stand out from the others. Despite this, however, the app does exactly what you would expect and want from something like this; it allows you to easily access your music from anywhere in the world without the need for syncing.