Report: in talks to buy Songza

BY GreenBot Staff

Published 6 Jun 2014

Apple buying Beats is passé. That happened days ago. Today, we’re reading a report from The New York st that is in talks to buy Songza, the playlist curation experts.

According to the st, ’s rry ge is allegedly in cahoots with the six-year-old Songza to acquire the company’s music curation streaming service for $15 million. Songza currently has 5.5 million active users, a paltry number compared to the 77 million active users on ra 40 million active users on Spotify—two streaming services that have all but set the precedent for this particular niche in the industry.

However, it’s not likely that is after the streaming service (it’s already got one in ay Music), but rather Songza’s playlist curation services, which are quite impressive when stacked up to the status quo. en introduced its ay l Access music streaming service at last year’s I/O, it highlighted its ability to start a radio station from any song. “The technology we use is based on a combination of machine hearing technology,” yce, oduct Manager for ay Music, told me over the phone at the time. Conversely, Songza’s playlists are curated by the company’s “music experts,” which would help give some of the edge it needs to lock users into its services keep them invested in their accounts. It would also help it compete directly against Apple’s Beats, which touts the fact that it has its own team of playlist curators.

Songza is a free music service only recently introduced an advertising model. It also has some investment from other sources like Amazon even stin Bieber’s manager (yes, seriously). 

As of now, neither nor Songza have offered a comment on the matter.