Google in Deal for Songza, a Music Playlist Service
By BEN SISARIO

In a sign of growing consolidation in the digital music business, Google announced on Tuesday that it had bought Songza, a three-year-old app that competes with Pandora and others in making customized playlists of recommended songs.

The price was not announced. But a person briefed on the deal, who was not authorized to speak about its terms, said that Google paid more than $39 million for Songza. Representatives of Google and Songza declined to comment on that figure.

Acquiring Songza could help Google improve its ability to offer musical “curation” — the buzzword of the moment in digital music, meaning the ability to generate playlists of songs that are tailored to each user. In the case of Songza, its specialty is a concierge service that matches playlists to particular times of day, or to activities, like working, studying or entertaining at home. A deal with the Weather Channel allows Songza to further tailor its music recommendations to a listener’s current weather conditions.

“We can’t think of a more inspiring company to join in our quest to provide the perfect soundtrack for everything you do,” Songza said in a statement on its website on Tuesday afternoon.

The Songza deal is much smaller than Apple’s recent $3 billion deal for Beats, which along with its line of popular headphones operates a fledgling subscription service whose chief selling point is playlists curated by music experts. Most of that purchase price was attributable to Beats’s lucrative headphones business.

Google said in an announcement that it was not “planning any immediate changes to Songza,” but may begin to incorporate the service into the company’s existing services, like Google Play Music or even YouTube. Google Play Music includes an iTunes-like download store as well as a subscription streaming service, All Access, that competes with Spotify. Barely a year after being introduced, All Access is already available in 28 countries, but music executives complain that its appeal has been limited.

Songza, which offers its playlists free along with advertising, could give Google a ready-made free music service along with expertise in creating playlists.

Introduced in fall 2011, Songza emerged from the ashes of a music download service called Amie Street, whose founders met at Brown University. Songza grew quickly, reporting 5.5 million regular users at the end of last year. Pandora, which has dominated the market for free streaming music, has more than 75 million regular users. Counting investments made in Amie Street, Songza has raised a total of $12 million from investors including Amazon, the William Morris Endeavor talent agency and the music managers Troy Carter and Scooter Braun.

Apple’s purchase of Beats has brought speculation of many further deals among streaming music services, many of which are run by small start-ups with limited budgets. Spotify, one of the sector’s leaders, has 10 million paying subscribers around the world and may be considering an initial public offering of stock.

Last week, Lew Dickey, the chief executive of Cumulus Media, a chain of more than 400 radio stations that owns a 15 percent stake in the streaming service Rdio, predicted in an interview with The Associated Press that “there will be handful of survivors” among such streaming companies.

Google 併串流音樂公司Songza

Google併購串流音樂播放曲目客製服務公司Songza，顯示Google正調整數位音樂策略，也反映串流音樂市場戰況升溫，成為科技公司的必爭之地。

這樁併購交易在1日宣布，金額未公開。這意味收購價對截至3月底擁有590億美元現金的Google而言，可能微不足道。紐約時報引述知情人士說，Google支付逾3,900萬美元。

Songza是已推出三年的免費音樂串流與推薦服務，可依使用者心情編纂播放曲目，競爭對手是Pandora以及其他提供客製化播放清單與推薦歌曲的業者。

Songza的應用程式（App）支援蘋果iPhone、iPad以及搭載Google Android軟體的裝置。Songza的技術可能整合至Google的音樂串流服務，也可能被旗下YouTube網站用來向用戶推薦音樂影片。

隨著愈來愈多人用手機、平板、個人電腦上網聽音樂，數位音樂領域時下最熱門字眼是「篩選」（curation），即依個人需求量身訂製播放清單的功能。收購Songza可加強Google 這方面的能力。

這樁交易也反映科技巨擘為爭霸串流音樂市場，紛紛強化自家音樂相關服務。蘋果5月宣布以30億美元併購耳機製造商Beats，主要就是看上Beats開發的選曲功能；亞馬遜6月也推出串流音樂服務Prime Music。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/02/business/media/google-buys-songza-a-playlist-app-for-any-occasion.html

2014-07-03．經濟日報．A12．國際視野．編譯湯淑君