MOG network has more than 62 million monthly U.S. unique visitors and 170 million monthly global unique visitors, making it the largest music-focused ad network in the United States. GigaOM had heard that MOG was hoping to sell its music service & blog-network business separately. MOG had raised $25 million in venture funding. This concludes our coverage of MOG.

The deal brings 117 major artist sites — like AliciaKeys.com and GossipYouth.com — to MOG’s network, which historically has been mostly made up of blogs. (The company also has a relatively new music streaming service).

CEO David Hyman tells us the Sony Music sites reach about 6 million unique monthly users — which means the size of MOG’s ad network is increasing by about 50 percent. Sony Pictures had previously managed ad sales for the Sony Music sites.

Full uncut session

The second round closed at around $10 million, with previous investor Menlo Ventures and new investors, European VC firm Balderton Capital splitting the investment, our sources say. The valuation is about double of what it raised $5 million at last summer, so a significant bump up in a short period. Mog is looking for a GM to run the UK service now. The money was raised by media i-bank MESA Global, which has of late been doing a slew of fund raises, along with the usual lineup of M&A deals.

Mog.com had already raised a total $12.5 million from Menlo Ventures, Simon Equity, Universal Music Group and *Sony* Music in the last four years, including $5 million in August.

Last.fm has been amongst the leaders for a social music experience but doesn’t offer on-demand, Spotify has a fantastic on-demand experience but has little social experience – but Mog.com now has elements of both. Though it originated as a place for members (Moggers) to blog about music they like, in December it added All Access, an on-demand music subscription costing $5 a month.

CEO David Hyman spoke to our UK editor Robert Andrews last month at Midem (prior to the close of this funding), and wouldn’t detail take-up of its newly launched service, but a subscription that cheap could prove popular in UK. Spotify’s subscription costs £9.99 a month (for ad-free or mobile) in UK, and Hyman said: “We’ll be much cheaper than that. We don’t have to offset the burden of haemmorhaging per-track costs.”

Last.fm has not been successful in the U.S., despite being bought by CBS (NYSE: CBS), and the talk is that U.S. labels are adamant they will sanction only Spotify’s premium service, not the free, ad-supported offering. Like them, Hyman will be challenged to launch a service from scratch across the pond – but he was withering in his assessment of each…

– Spotify: “We’d like to do free, but the model doesn’t work – imeem just went out of business – the services are haemmorhaging money. The labels won’t let them continue to do free. Contrary to what you read, I don’t think you’ll be seeing that (free Spotify) in the States at all. Free’s cool, free’s like crack.” Could Mog.com partner with Spotify? “I don’t know why we’d want to. They’re losing a lot of money. You can do free, but that’s the easy thing, almost the booby prize.”

– Last.fm: “Last.fm never gave you the music” (it has playable tracks but, like Pandora, it’s a radio, not an on-demand, offering). “Once they got acquired by CBS, they haven’t done anything. It was cool back in the day.”

Unlike either of those, though, Mog.com has little recognition in the UK and will need to build its brand there.

The market is getting increasingly crowded for subscription music services, with the above, Sky Songs, Virgin Media’s forthcoming service, We7, upcoming Rdio and others all taking advantage of labels’ increasing embrace of legal digital services to launch their own version. The idea of unlimited downloads for a monthly tariff could challenge the a la carte download model pioneered, and still led, by iTunes Store – but many expect *Apple*, eventually, to launch a subscription package of its own.

Update: Balderton later confirmed its investment Friday morning, saying UK launch will come “by the end of the second quarter of this year, with a comprehensive catalog of music of approximately seven million songs”. It said 17 percent of free-trial users of Mog.com’s All Access service converted to paying for it.

MOG raised $5 million in funding in August. Hyman told us then that the company was still in negotiations with Universal, *Sony*, Warner, EMI, and a number of indie labels. I asked him whether there had been an overall shift in the talks — particularly with Pandora and Rhapsody’s mobile apps doing so well — but he would only say that MOG had taken “as small a margin as humanly possible” to be able to get the service launched, and to generate interest from a majority of users from the onset.

“We’ll be able to make money because we have a hybrid model. Our ad business is growing very fast,” Hyman said, speaking about MOG’s blog network. Launched in 2005, Hyman said its network of 700+ blogs attracts over 9.5 million monthly uniques. Partner blogs will get free access to the streaming service to help promote it. It will also have social features, like the ability to see what friends are streaming in real-time, as well as playlist creation and music discovery tools.

As far as what will help MOG’s streaming player to stand out from the pack, Hyman said it was the “all-you-can-eat” access at a low price point. “There aren’t any of the restrictions that you have to deal with on a free radio service like Pandora, and yet you get unlimited access to what amounts to a whole iTunes library for $5 per month,” he said. He added that the company was already starting to work on distribution deals with the ISPs and mobile carriers.

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