The latest zero-to-hero story on the iPhone App Store is an app called Songza.
If you’ve never heard of it, you have now. And your friends who might not have heard of it soon will too. In just 10 days, the app was downloaded a million times.
So what is Songza? It’s a music streaming app. Yes, another one of those. And yes, just like everyone else, Songza tried to differentiate itself. The difference between it and the many others who have tried before it is that Songza actually succeeded.
Its hook is to provide you with different types of music depending on your current activity – working out, waking up, singing in the shower, “feeling confident,” etc.
Apparently users really like that idea, because Songza is huge. Even though Pandora and others let you do basically the same thing – if you want workout music, just go to one of the dance or high-octane music channels – the novelty of Songza is really hitting it big.
It lives on the iPad and iPhone but it also exists as a Web app, so Android devices are also able to access it. But the iOS app downloads alone have climbed to more than 1.5 million.
Ironically, this started out as a side project from a few developers who ended up selling it for peanuts because they ended up getting jobs at Mozilla. Just goes to show one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
