Google Has Acquired Music Streaming Startup Songza

Google GOOGL +1.17% announced today that it has acquired New York based Songza, a music streaming company that is known for curating playlists and recommending them using a signature Concierge service. When selecting the Concierge feature, Songza will ask you to pick your mood or genre preference. Songza also senses your time of day to suggest curated playlists like “Mellow Escapist Evening” or “Classic Pop Wake-Up Call.” The playlists are curated by DJs and music journalists. Songza is available through its website, iOS, Android and Chromecast.

The terms of the deal were undisclosed, but earlier rumors suggest that the price of the acquisition was $15 million. According to TechCrunch, there was a possibility that Songza was approached by other potential buyers, which may have raised the price “considerably.” Sources with The New York Times said that the deal was worth over $39 million several hours after the deal was announced. Employees will remain in Songza’s office in Long Island City, New York for the next few weeks and then will work out of Google’s NYC headquarters.

Google said that nothing will change for Songza users following the acquisition. In the future, Google will find ways to “bring what you love about Songza to Google Play Music.” Songza features will likely be rolled into YouTube and several other Google products after the Google Play Music integration. Google said that Songza “built a great service which uses contextual expert-curated playlists to give you the right music at the right time.”

The acquisition of Songza follows Apple’s AAPL +0.63% high-profile $3 billion acquisition of Beats Electronics. Beats unveiled a music streaming subscription service called Beats Music earlier this year, which was included in the Apple deal. Last month, Amazon launched a music streaming service within the Prime subscription service. About a year ago, Apple announced a free Internet radio service built into iTunes called iTunes Radio. Other major players in the music streaming space include publicly listed Pandora and startups like Spotify and Rdio.

Launched in 2007, Songza raised a total of $6.7 million in funding. Investors in Songza include Amazon.com AMZN +2.36%, Metamorphic Ventures, Deep Fork Capital, William Morris Endeavor, Geoff Judge, David Hirsch, Scooter Braun and Gary Vaynerchuk. Songza has around 5.5 million active users, but it is unknown how many pay for Songza’s $0.99 weekly ad-removal subscription service.

Source:Forbes