Songza

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Songza
Web address http://songza.com
Slogan Good music makes good times.[1]
Type of site Free internet radio
Available language(s) English
Owner Amie Street
Created by Aza Raskin and Scott Robbin
Launched November 8, 2007 (2007-11-08)
Alexa rank positive decrease 7,758 (December 2013)[2]
Current status Active

Songza is a free music streaming and recommendation service for Internet users in North America.

Stating that its playlists are made by music experts, the service recommends various playlists based on time of day and mood or activity.[3][4] Songza offers playlists for activities such as waking up, working out, commuting, concentrating, unwinding, entertaining, and sleeping.[5] Users can vote songs up or down, and the service will adapt to the user's personal music preferences.[5] Users can find playlists not just based on artists, songs, or genres, but also based on themes, interests, and eras, such as "songs in Apple Commercials", "90s One-Hit Wonders", and "Music of Fashion Week".[6] Songza is headquartered in the Long Island City neighborhood of New York City.[7]

History

Amie Street acquired Songza, a product created by Aza Raskin and Scott Robbin, in October 2008.[8] In August 2010, Amie Street was sold to Amazon for an undisclosed amount.[9] Shortly after this the co-founders, CEO, Elias Roman, COO, Peter Asbill, CPO, Elliott Breece, and CCO, Eric Davich refocused their efforts on Songza.[3][10] The team discontinued the original version and relaunched a new alpha version of Songza, keeping nothing of the original product but the name.[11]

Over the next year the founders experimented with various iterations, when the app originally launched in 2010 "it was like a pre-Turntable.fm. A function called Social Radio allowed users to be DJs for their friends" stated PandoDaily.[4] This version of the app allowed it to be social and crowdsourced; the problem with it was that the service as it stood was not sufficiently differentiated from other services on the market and the quality of the crowd sourced playlists was low.[4] Following a year of testing various iterations of the alpha version of the app, Songza relaunched in beta on iPhone and Android apps on September 13, 2011, armed with a team of 25 expert music curators.[3][4][12][13]

In March 2012, Songza released its Music Concierge feature, on iPhone and the web.[3][12] The concierge presents users with up to 6 situations based on time of day, with filters for whatever mood they might be in. For example, on a Wednesday morning a user might be presented with situations for "Waking Up", "Singing in the Shower", "Working Out" and so on. This feature was rolled out to iPad on June 7, 2012, during the first ten days following the iPad app launch, Songza saw over 1.15 million downloads.[14] On June 12, 2012, Songza was listed as the top free app on iTunes for the iPad and the number two free app for the iPhone.[15] Concierge was released on Android on July 10, 2012, and Android tablet on August 14, 2012.[16][17] The app expanded to Canada on August 7, 2012 and became the #1 overall free app in Canada on August 13, 2012.[4][18] Within the week of Microsoft's Build developer event in June 2013, Songza snuck in their official Windows 8 App [19]

Songza launched in Canada on August 7, 2012 and reached the one million download mark after 70 days.[20][21]

Starting October 2013, Songza now inserts pop-up audio/video ads when initiating a playlist so is no longer "audio-ad free".

Similar organizations

References

  1. ↑ "Songza.com Site Info". Songza Media, Inc. Retrieved 2012-08-15. 
  2. ↑ "Songza.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2013-12-01. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Sisaro, Ben. "Pandora Faces Rivals for Ears and Ads". nytimes.com. Retrieved 2012-06-20. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Griffith, Erin. "Songza's Founders Realized They Weren't Thinking Radically Enough-Here's How They Changed That". PandoDaily. Retrieved 2012-08-15. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Tsukayama, Hayley. "TechBits: Songza adapts the music to your mood". washingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2012-06-23. 
  6. ↑ "About Us". Songza. Retrieved 2011-03-25. 
  7. ↑ Trapasso, Clare. "Songza music service streams for success". NYDailyNews.com. Retrieved 2012-07-27. 
  8. ↑ Nicole, Kristen. "Interview with Amie Street: Why Keep Acquisition of Songza a Secret?". bub.blicio.us. Retrieved 2011-03-25. 
  9. ↑ Arrington, Michael. "Amazon Acquires Amie Street, But Not In a Good Way". TechCrunch.com. Retrieved 2010-09-08. 
  10. ↑ "5 in 5! with Eric Davich, Chief Content Officer and Co-Founder of Songza". Internships.com. Retrieved 2012-08-06. 
  11. ↑ del Castillo, Michael. "Downtime: The birth of Songza". Upstart Business Journal. Retrieved 2012-06-15. 
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Empson, Rip. "Songza Raises Seven Figure Round; Launches Mobile, Sharable Music Collections In The Cloud". TechCrunch.com. Retrieved 2011-09-13. 
  13. ↑ "Songza launches iPhone and Android apps to digitize the mix tape" http://www.ad60.com/2011/09/19/songza-launches-iphone-android-apps-digitize-mix-tape/
  14. ↑ Mlot, Stephanie. "Songza Hits 1.15 Million iOS Downloads in 10 Days". PCMag.com. Retrieved 2012-06-18. 
  15. ↑ Peoples, Glenn. "Songza Reaches One Million iOs Downloads in Ten Days, But Is It the Next Big Thing?". Billboard.biz. Retrieved 2012-06-19. 
  16. ↑ Kameka, Andrew. "Songza re-ups with expert Music Concierge playlists, lockscreen controls, and new Holo-like design". Androinica.com. Retrieved 2012-07-10. 
  17. ↑ Mlot, Stephanie. "Songza App Now Available on Android Tablets". PCMag.com. Retrieved 2012-08-14. 
  18. ↑ Ram, Anand. "Songza's Elias Roman wants to provide the music for every mood". o.canada.com. Retrieved 2012-08-07. 
  19. ↑ WPCentral. "" WP Central 2013-06-27
  20. ↑ Dobby, Christine. "Songza startup singing a Canadian tune." Financial Post. 2012-08-23.
  21. ↑ Crook, Jordan. "Songza’s Canada Launch Nabs 1 Million New Users In 70 Days." Tech Crunch. 2012-10-18.

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