Songza to fold into Google Play Music

The ‘Good music makes good times’ slogan will be a thing of the past come January 31, when Google will discontinue itsfree internet radio site Songza.

In terms of structure and platform, Google will convert most of Songza’s core components to their 2016 subscribership model for Google Play Music. All existing accounts transferred to Play Music will remain consistent with playlists, upvoted songs, and stations all converting to the new subscription.

The brainchild of two American I.T designers in the mid 2000’s, Songza was acquired in 2010 and then sold to Amazon for an undisclosed amount.

After years of re-testing and tweaking, Songza hosted one of the first Music Concierge features in its beta mode. In 2014 Google acquired the fully refurbished model with speculation of the buying price being somewhere between the $15 million to $39 million mark.

Songza subscribers now have a two-month period in which they can switch over to Play Music. The two-month gap may seem like a small window, but reports have speculated that streaming service competition has intensified dramatically since the launch of services such as Tidal. The need for the big names to capitalise on its subscriber bases is becoming more and more evident.

See below for the email being sent out to Songza users:

In a nutshell, we built Songza to make life better by playing you music tailored to every moment of every day.

In July 2014, Songza was acquired by Google (#ConsciousCoupling), and in them we found a company who shares our excitement for IRL soundtracking. Over the past year and a half, we’ve worked hard to bring all of the features that you love from Songza to Google Play Music, including the Concierge and our massive library of hand-curated playlists — from Walking On Sunshine to Hillbilly Bodybuilding, no moment shall go un-soundtracked.

Thanks to Google Play Music (and our kick-ass team, which continues to grow faster than a Twista verse), we’ve been able to bring what you love about Songza to a new audience of music fans in the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Ireland, Brazil, Japan, Germany, France, Norway, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand and Austria (*wipes brow*) — with even more countries coming soon.

It’s now time for us to focus on building a single, cohesive product. So as of January 31, 2016, Songza will become Google Play Music, and you will no longer be able to access Songza.com or the Songza mobile apps. HEY! There’s no crying! Are you crying? There’s no crying in music streaming! Moving to Google Play Music is free, and your favorite playlists can come with you! Pinky swear. Soon, when you visit Songza, you’ll be greeted with a prompt that will let you bring all of your Songza listening history and favorite playlists over to Google Play Music — so please make sure to do that! Using all of Songza’s features in Google Play Music is 100% free and doesn’t require a credit card, you just need to accept our new Terms of Service and Google’s Privacy Policy (if you haven’t already).

Thank you SO much for being a part of the Songza community over all of these years. We’re really proud of the work that we’ve done on Google Play Music and we truly hope you’ll join us there.

Hugs and headphones,

Elias, Elliott, Eric, Peter and the whole Songza team