Google to consolidate Songza into music streaming service

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Faced with shrinking but strengthening competition in the streaming music sector, Google announced Wednesday that it would be consolidating its popular Songza brand into Google Play Music.

Google acquired Songza, a free service that lets users listen to hyper-specific playlists like "Dancing at Your Desk" and "Alt-Rock Wake-Up Call," in 2014. The tech giant has been rapidly advancing into subscription streaming music, facing off with strong upstarts like Spotify and the tech giant Apple, which launched its Apple Music streaming product last summer. But Google's sprint into music subscriptions has been somewhat disjointed. Alongside Songza, Google offers both Play Music and the new YouTube Red service for the same $9.99 monthly subscription, enticing users with different value propositions for intertwined products.

Winding down the Songza brand into Google Play Music may seem like a superficial move, but it is a crucial one in the streaming sector, which has shown signs of consolidation as users flock to services with huge brand recognition like Spotify and Apple Music. Rdio, an American streaming service popular in Canada, announced last month that it would be filing for bankruptcy protection and selling some of its assets to the Internet radio company Pandora Media. For Google, consolidating some of its own fragmented streaming brands will help it fight its uphill battle in the sector with a more unified front.

Google also announced it would bring an ad-supported free tier of Google Play Music to Canada Wednesday. The paid version has been available here since 2014. Songza's website and mobile apps will wind down at the end of January, but all of its functionality will be available on the free Play Music service. Much like Spotify, the free tier is a way to entice users into the easier-to-monetize paid tier.

"It's a matter of building one amazing product instead of two, and allows us to take our idea farther, faster," said Peter Asbill, a Songza co-founder who is now a product marketing manager with Play Music, in an interview. "We're not done building on the idea we started with with Songza."

Dissolving the brand was perhaps an inevitability, said Eric Davich, another Songza co-founder working on Play Music. "We had a lot of conversations with Google, even before joining Google, about our shared vision," he said in a Toronto interview. "For a long time, we've always wanted to marry the best of both products."

Spotify is the subscription streaming-music leader worldwide with 75 million users, 20 million of whom pay for the service. Apple Music, which launched in June, has about 11 million users, 6.5 million of whom pay.

Both services have recently made a huge push behind personalized, context-driven playlists to help its users discover music based on what they like or what they're doing. This strategy, which entices users to keep coming back for more, has been Songza's bread and butter since launching to the public in 2010.

Songza tries to find the right mix of human curation and algorithmic recommendations to give users songs that best fit their mood, activity, or favourite genre at any given moment. The service then builds on listening data, casting aside unpopular songs and playlists and bringing others to the surface.

This, Mr. Asbill said, should only improve going forward as Google tries to steal market share from the likes of Spotify and Apple. "We see a future where you don't have to search for the content or podcasts you want - that stuff just finds you," he said.

All four of Songza's co-founders have remained at Google following the acquisition, which the New York Times reported to be worth $39-million (U.S.).

Google also recently began integrating podcasts into the Play Music service.

The streaming world has gone through many growing pains this year. On Wednesday, Tidal, a high-fidelity music service owned by the rapper Jay-Z, announced a new chief executive – the company's third within the past year. Jeff Toig, a former executive with the streaming website Soundcloud, was hand-picked by the rapper, a spokesperson said, and will start helming Tidal in January.