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Google Acquires Songza
July 1, 2014 at 3:11 PM (PT)
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GOOGLE has acquired SONGZA, an online radio service that anticipates the kinds of songs users may want to hear next, not unlike PANDORA, CNET.COM reports. Financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed.
NEW YORK-based SONGZA is a radio-style, free service similar to PANDORA and unlike on-demand music services such as BEATS MUSIC and SPOTIFY, which include curated playlists and recommendations as a facet of their offerings but recruit paying subscribers by promising large, on-demand catalogs of songs without ads. SONGZA focuses on playlists curated by music experts that are designed for specific activities or occasions, which SONGZA then suggests to specific listeners based on seven points of context: day of week, time of day, the device used being used, weather, location, what the particular listener has done before considering those previous five points, and then what all other SONGZA listeners have done before given those five points.
"There are very few services that people want to tell exactly what they're doing at any given moment," SONGZA CCEO ELIAS ROMAN said. "The thing that's really important is the ability to use data in a way that makes people's lives better."
In a statement, GOOGLE said there would be no immediate changes to SONGZA, but it will explore ways to integrate SONGZA into GOOGLE PLAY MUSIC and will also consider opportunities to integrate it with YOUTUBE and other products. Ironically, GOOGLE-owned YOUTUBE is expected to launch a streaming service of its own this summer.
"We're moving to a time when context is king, when people don't have to find things," SONGZA CCEO ELIAS ROMAN said. "Technology is about to work a lot harder for us. It's a cool thing to be a small part of that."

