MOG is all about music. Members list their music collections, talk about concerts they’ve seen and artists and bands they want to see. Kind of like MySpace, but without all the extraneous, non-music content, like hobbies, favorite movies and TV shows. At MOG.com it’s music, music, music.

The idea is simple enough: An online community where the metal meets the heads, where country can hobnob with western and where jamband fans can band together.

MOG citizenship starts with downloading the MOG-O-MATIC software, which creates your page, assembles a list of the music stored on your hard drive, then posts that on your page for other members to see. The MOG-O-MATIC also lists what you last listened to as well as the songs you played most often during the last month. Additional features include blogging and minutia like “My First Album Was” and “My First Concert Was” listings. The MOG lifestyle isn’t concerned with useless distractions like mortgages, jobs and taxes. Music is first, last and all of the in-between.

But MOG is more than, say, Jimmy Buffett fans meeting other Parrotheads. Artists and industry people are also using it. Michelle Shocked is there, as is Jolie Holland and Charlie Musselwhite. And we couldn’t help but notice that former Reprise Records prez Howie Klein has his own piece of MOG heaven.

MOG is the creation of former MTV marketing exec David Hyman. While MOG doesn’t actually post music or sell tracks or CDs, it does generate 30-second samples for those tracks found in members’ collections and provides links to Amazon and iTunes for quick-and-easy impulse buying.

Of course, music communities are nothing new on the Net. In fact, music often served as one of the first bonding adhesives when it came to forming Internet communities. Some of the first amateur Web pages were unofficial artist pages created by fans as tributes to their favorites. Plus, there’s a seemingly endless amount of Usenet news groups dedicated to various performers and groups. Long before anyone even uttered anything about “online social networks,” people were forming online music communities.

But MOG makes it awfully easy. A few mouse clicks is all it takes to have your own spread on MOG.

“Thanks to bleeding-edge technology and ridiculously easy tools, MOG takes the work out of showing the world what you’re about musically and connecting you with others with similar musical tastes,” Hyman said. “We use all of MOG’s smarts to point you in the direction of people like you, based on the music you’re into – not to pretend that a computer really knows what you like.”