While not official yet, Google is reportedly going to pay somewhere between $15 and $39 million for Songza, a streaming music service that specializes in customized playlists of recommended songs.
Songza offers listeners a ‘customized’ music service that matches playlists to particular times of day, or to activities, like working, studying or entertaining at home. A deal with the Weather Channel allows Songza to further tailor its music recommendations to a listener’s current weather conditions.
“We can’t think of a more inspiring company to join in our quest to provide the perfect soundtrack for everything you do,” Songza said in a statement on its website on Tuesday afternoon.
Songza was launched in the fall of 2011 as a music download service called Amie Street. After an infusion of $12 million in cash from investors, including Amazon, the William Morris Endeavor talent agency and music managers Troy Carter and Scooter Braun, the company has grown significantly. By the end of 2013 they reported having 5.5 million regular users (compared to Pandora, which has more than 75 million regular users).
According to a post on the Google+ page:
They’ve [Songza] built a great service which uses contextual expert-curated playlists to give you the right music at the right time. We aren’t planning any immediate changes to Songza, so it will continue to work like usual for existing users. Over the coming months, we’ll explore ways to bring what you love about Songza to Google Play Music. We’ll also look for opportunities to bring their great work to the music experience on YouTube and other Google products.
Compared to Apple’s recent $3 billion acquisition of Beats (that also included their version of a subscription streaming service curated by music experts), the Google/Songza deal might be considered small potatoes but Google tends to make the most of the companies they purchase. As usual we’ll have to wait and see what Google does with Songza going forward.
