Google is reportedly in talks to acquire Songza, a streaming music service, for $15 Million. Songza is best know for music curation – something that is missing in Google Music. Given that Songza has an efficient method of music curation and that it has an active group of 5.5 million listeners per month, this sounds like a good deal.
Google is doing pretty good with its music products – it has the Play Store, it has the All Access Premium subscription service and also Youtube (yup apart from being popular for videos, Youtube is popular for streaming music too). However, when Google music service doesn’t do good in the area of music curation. Or presenting the users with thematic music for that matter.
Songza is much better than the Google’s All Access music and it is razor focused by presenting users with thematic music in a much better way than Youtube. Songza creates thematic music mixes based on the person’s mood or based on the local weather forecast. Many companies that provide playlists have them organized based on Genres or user preferences. But Songza creates/provides customized playlists based on what the user is doing at the time of listening to music.
Google is also rumored to launch a standalone Youtube music service – and Songza’s acquisition might be an important move in this direction. With Songza, Google will be able to compete with Apple considering Apple’s purchase of Beats. Google has an edge in this comparison because Songza has 10 times more subscribers than Beats!