Google has decided to retire the Songza brand in favor of swallowing it whole for its big push into streaming. The playlist curation service was acquired by Google in July 2014 and over a year and a half later on Jan, 31, 2016 Google will retire the website and app to officially become a piece of Google Play Music.
The website and app will disappear but the data will live on. Everything should be integrated into Google Play Music to create one unit. Users will be able to migrate their playlists and favorite songs over to Google Play Music.
Launched in 2007, Songza was an innovative way to curate music. It helped bridge the divide between human curation and data-driven tools to help decipher a user's activity and make recommendations based on that. This type of dual-curation is what other services attempt to bring to their users with recommendations and playlists. In 2012 it launched the "concierge" tool that helps users pick a playlist based on a mood or activity, something that has become standard in just about every other service now.
Songza had grown into a global service with fans in countries like the United States, Brazil, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Austria and Australia, but now it will grow even further as a part of the curation aspect of Google Play Music.
As these larger services like Spotify, Google Play, Pandora and Apple Music jockey for position, the consolidation of smaller more specialized companies will continue to happen as the large streaming services look to gain expertise and an edge on their competitors.
