Alphabet GOOGL-owned Google recently announced that it will shut down its music streaming service Songza at the end of January.
It also said that following the closure, it plans to incorporate the service into its own flagship music streaming service Google Play Music. In fact, most of the niche streaming service’s features have already been migrated to Google Play Music. Shutting it down completely will be the final step.
Songza, launched in 2007, offered listeners human-curated stations, free radio, and playlists based on factors including the user's mood, activity or time of the day by using a signature Concierge service. The platform, using past listening history and other variables, creates the best playlists that are tailored for each user. Also, using the Concierge service, it allows users to search for music based on artist, genre or song, holidays, themes, interests and eras.
In July last year, Google acquired this popular service in a bid to ramp up its Play Music offering. Since the acquisition, Google has been incorporating Songza’s core features and technology into its own service.
And now since most of the functionality has been integrated into Google Play, Google will shut down the service at January-end to focus on creating one single, unified product. Users still have nearly two months to completely transfer their accounts to Google Play Music and keep track of their favorite music and playlists.
Google has been focusing on boosting its music service of late to compete more effectively with the likes of Spotify, Apple AAPL Music, and Pandora P.
In fact, as a part of this effort, Google recently released YouTube Music, which enables users to discover new music, and pairs with its YouTube Red service. YouTube Red, which is compatible with Google Play Music, allows users to download videos for offline playback, play videos in the background on their mobile devices.
Therefore, the merging of Songza with Google Play Music makes sense in regards with streamlining Google’s music streaming services to boost Google Play Music.
Google has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). A better-ranked stock is NVIDIA Corp. NVDA sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).
Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >>
Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report
Be the first to comment