Google announced on Tuesday that it has acquired Songza, a music streaming service that uses humans to curate playlists instead of automated systems like much of the competition.
“They’ve built a great service which uses contextual expert-curated playlists to give you the right music at the right time,” Google said in an online post. For the time being, Google said there won’t be any “immediate changes” to Songza.
In the future, Google also said it will work to integrate the service into Google Play Music, its existing music streaming service, as well as to enhance its YouTube and Google search. Google is trying to make greater inroads in streaming music against rivals like Pandora and Spotify, which rely on algorithms to chose songs for listeners. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
“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 blog post. “No immediate changes to Songza are planned, other than making it faster, smarter, and even more fun to use. In the meantime, we’ll be walking on sunshine.”
Google’s move comes after Apple acquired Beats for $3 billion in May to ramp up its own efforts in music streaming and headphones.
