
Songza is Joining Google - jervisfm
http://daily.songza.com/google/
======
untog
I think the reality here is that you can't be a tiny startup in areas like
music. Licensing costs can kill you. Much better to be backed by a bigger
organisation.

~~~
yvsong
I learned a similar lesson in another domain.

Songza's headphone-specific equalizer made my Sennheiser HD 558 on iPhone much
more enjoyable with the profile for HD 580. Hope they provide a profile for HD
558. Hardware headphone amplifiers are obsolete. Software equalizers are the
solution.

~~~
mbell
> Hardware headphone amplifiers are obsolete. Software equalizers are the
> solution.

Huh? Equalization and amplification are rather orthogonal concerns.

~~~
yvsong
I should have limited my comments to mobile listeners with mid to low
impedance headphones (which are the vast majority). I used to listen to iPhone
with HD 580 (300 ohm) directly, with full volume and no amplifier/equalizer.
It's loud enough for sensitive ears, and very enjoyable, better than HD 558.
With amplifiers the sound is a little better, but not worth the inconvenience.
For mid to low impedance headphones, amplifiers are often used to improve
sound quality, not volume. Software equalizers (like those in Songza) would
work well, and further shrink the market of amplifiers. Remember that in this
mobile internet age, the American consumers have voted for Beats, I'm not sure
what for, perhaps the overall user experience.

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spankalee
I just discovered Songaza because of this, and... awesome!

I work for Google, so I know I'm totally biased here, but Play Music is pretty
great, and it does recommend good new music to me, but the playlists by
activity, mood, setting, genre of Songaza already look much better.

I can't wait till there's some integration and I can save Songaza playlists to
my library and pin them to my phone.

~~~
Donzo
I'm really satisfied with Google Play All Access. You can integrate your own
library and add songs that you like while streaming. Since adding the songs to
my library is pretty much indistinguishable from ownership, I basically never
need to purchase another song again.

Also, since Google Now began stalking my search habits, I get all kinds of
useful recommendations about when artists I like release new material.

The acquisition of Songza will likely make a great product even better.

~~~
rtpg
one reason to purchase is if you want to download the MP3s (or support the
artists directly).

The recommendations are really great, though.

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tomkarlo
Play Music sorely needed this - lots of great curated lists in addition to
albums and playlists. Can't wait for the integration - I really like Songza
for those times I'm working or driving and don't feel like playing close
attention to building a playlist.

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fatbat
Congrats to Songza! I really like Songza and discovered many great music I
otherwise would not have found with the service. It has become my go to for
music discovery.

I hope Songza continues and become even better. :)

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gtirloni
_We can’t think of a better company to join in our quest to provide the
perfect soundtrack for everything you do._

Erm.. you got it backwards, folks.

 _No immediate changes to Songza are planned, other than making it faster,
smarter, and even more fun to use._

If Songza was Youtube-like size, then yes. They are tiny so, yeah, unlikely.

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schnevets
Oh wow! After Spotify started offering curated playlists, I thought Songza was
dead in the water. This is probably the best result the team could have asked
for.

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mirkules
This made me sad. i used Songza for a while and actually preferred it over
Pandora. Glad for the people that cashed out, but that means that the service
will either die soon or it will be Google-plusified: something I clearly don't
agree with.

So for anyone looking to cancel their account as I did, it's not really
advertised anywhere. Go to legacy.songza.com, log in, click on your
profile->settings then you will find a big red delete button.

I only discovered this after I tried to submit feedback asking how to cancel
and got an automated suggestion with the above steps.

It's interesting you have to go to a legacy site to do this.

~~~
toki5
Just food for thought, not looking to spark an argument or anything -- doesn't
it seem like canceling your account _now_ is a little premature? Why not wait
and see what changes actually happen, and cancel in protest to those?

~~~
mirkules
Not premature at all, I simply do not agree to using Google products (or
rather I do not agree to their Terms of Service) and was providing a hard-to-
find delete button should others need to use it (for whatever reason).

Indeed I'm not trying to start a "OMG everyone cancel your accounts!!" train,
but I can understand why you (and whoever downvoted me) viewed it as a protest
cancellation.

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jmspring
It's curious reading most of the comments...seems like most of those
commenting hadn't actually used Songza.

Hand's down it was the best selection of curated playlists that were easy to
discover. Spotify had something roughly similar, but you had to search
specifically for it, where Songza was more categorized. I kinda like thinking
of it as the very early days of the Web -- Songza was the early audio Yahoo
... that was cross platform.

I've seen some great lists from Nokia Music on Windows Phone and some decent
lists from iTunes Radio, but Songza was generally better overall.

I'll keep using it, so long as it is a stand alone app. Once that ceases, I
may move elsewhere.

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
My impression too. Tried 8rtacks, but the limited skipping and the terrible ui
put me off.

It seems they are now redirecting all playlist URLs to daily.songza.com though
- can I still access them in some other way? Being able to import them to
Spotify would be killer.

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radiorental
I remember when Aza first announced this on a list way back in the day. I had
no idea they were still ploughing away, glad to hear it evolved. If I recall
correctly they were originally just scraping audio soundtracks from youtube
music videos.

I'm curious, generally speaking does a founder still have skin in the game at
this stage or do people generally get bought out?

I know it's a naive question for most of you, just curious how things
generally play.

[http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/songza](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/songza)

------
kin
Apps that curate music seem to be pretty viral in usage. I feel like you can't
say the current growth rate of users will really pay off.

Apple tried iTunes Radio and that failed so they snatched Beats. Google Play
is not gaining enough traction so they've now snatched Songza.

Is Amazon going to join the gang? Or perhaps Facebook acquire Spotify to up
the ante?

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ZanderEarth32
Hadn't heard of Songza but just gave it a download.

I like the "Decade" breakdown and various genres you can filter by. The lack
of genres or granular filters in Rdio is my biggest gripe with them (apart
from my few issues with Rdio, it's still my favorite music streaming service).

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glennericksen
Congrats to the Songza team. One of my favorite ways to listen to music by
far.

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evertonfuller
I wonder how much cash they were sinking. They didn't earn any money at all,
they were the literal definition of waiting for a buyout.

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nichochar
Songza is an 8tracks clone made by connected people in the valley, funded by
connected people in the valley, and bought by rich people in the valley. Their
product is not as good as the competition (8tracks, spotify, soundcloud cover
everything, maybe rdio has some pretty slick features too), but still they did
incredibly well... It's weird. Most of their playlists are made by the songza
team, I would love to see their numbers.

Anyway, if you're looking for crowdsourced playlists, I would just use 8tracks

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timboslice
Awesome news for Songza. It's my goto app for curated playlists. I'm excited
to see what the future will bring!

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qmaxquique
There are other products doing exactly the same and also covering other pain-
points like data encryption and the possibility to host your own "personal-
dropbox". You may want to test Owncloud 7. Check this terminal.com snapshot
that I just created as a demo:
[https://terminal.com/tiny/fwv5ra8X8I](https://terminal.com/tiny/fwv5ra8X8I)

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largote
Good for them, I love play music all access radio, but manually curated
playlists are something else.

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Raphmedia
Also, the old Songza interface was way better. Look there if you miss it.
legacy.songza.com

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tindrlabs
Very happy for Songza, use it everyday. As always, I hope they keep the
service open.

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BrainInAJar
Anyone know of another equivalent music service, I refuse to touch Google
products

~~~
tom3k
The service I'm working on is still in its infancy, but I'd love to hear what
people think of the concept; it basically helps musicians and photographers
expose their content to a wider audience, and on the flip side, allows you to
sit back and listen to a playlist of music whilst enjoying a beautiful photo
slide show. The playlists are tailored to a user's mood, and you're able to
filter the music based on genre. The website's voliyo.com, and if anyone's
interested in signing up to the beta as a photographer or musician, feel free
to message me for an invite code!

~~~
BrainInAJar
So, here'd be my concern with that. I very rarely put on music and just
"experience" it. Usually when I put on music it's in the background while I
work on other things. I can't imagine myself ever wanting to look at a photo
slideshow while listening to music.

~~~
tom3k
Thanks for the feedback! You're not alone in sharing this view, so I'd
definitely like to try and find a conceptual workaround for those who like to
keep their music open in a background tab.

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Kiro
So Songza is basically a blog?

~~~
akx
No, but the main page redirects to daily.songza.com without any indication if
you're outside the US, apparently...

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ashman5
Because Skynet isn't Skynet without Songza!

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gress
A response to Apple buying Beats?

~~~
morenoh149
no where near the same magnitude

~~~
gress
Similar magnitude to the beats streaming service.

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jpeg_hero
Our incredible journey!

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aaronchriscohen
so happy for elias and his team. this is a huge win for the queens tech
community!

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breadbox
Oh look, yet another music classification system that lists twelve different
genres of music invented after the CD player but has one genre labelled
"Classical" to cover several centuries of wildly varying musical styles.

~~~
alphakappa
Imagine how international listeners feel about music classification systems
(nearly every one out there) that clump all international music into 'World
Music'. Just looking at Indian music, there's probably a few dozen high level
categories you can create for completely different genres of music.

North Indian, South Indian, Hindustani, Carnatic, Film music from maybe a
dozen different languages that are wildly different, qawwalis, ghazals,
Rabindra Sangeet, music from different periods of Indian cinema... I could go
on... sigh.

~~~
notatoad
Are there no Indian music services that do a better job?

~~~
aarohmankad
There's Saavn, but it does a mediocre job IMO.

[http://www.saavn.com/](http://www.saavn.com/)

~~~
donniezazen
I wonder if they are even legal.

~~~
balladeer
And why would you wonder so? Some insight please.

~~~
donniezazen
Creative industry in Asian country are highly disorganized. For India, one of
the best possible way to watch any new content if either in movie theaters or
live on television. Internet sucks and cable companies suck too that makes it
pretty hard for folks to get content they actually want to watch. Tech savvy
folks go for torrents and less techy folks buy pirated content from street
vendors.

Insight is they are based off NY which makes they impervious to Indian laws.
And personally, I haven't come across any good Indian website that gives you
impression that you are buying legal content.

