Liz Gannes

Recent Posts by Liz Gannes

Songza Apps Serve Up Playlists for Every Occasion

Songza, a social Internet radio service, is today launching apps for Android, iPhone and Web that give listeners access to playlists for most any genre, activity or mood.

Songza co-founder and CEO Elias Roman said he envisions Songza as a music concierge. So the interface is not oriented toward search (like Spotify) or artist-specific channels (like Pandora) — or a virtual communal listening experience, like fellow social music service Turntable.fm.

Instead, users have access to a selection of the 75,000 streaming playlists people have already created on Songza, like “Up All Night” or “Walking on Sunshine.”

In case the directory isn’t doing it for you, there’s also an activity feed of friends’ listens and a “just for you” section of personalized recommendations. You can’t create new playlists from the mobile apps — that’s a Web-only feature.

Roman said Songza is “working with other social services to keep a listening history,” which would seem to refer to Facebook’s expected upcoming music integrations.

Songza recently raised an undisclosed amount of funding led by Deep Fork Capital.

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Just as the atom bomb was the weapon that was supposed to render war obsolete, the Internet seems like capitalism’s ultimate feat of self-destructive genius, an economic doomsday device rendering it impossible for anyone to ever make a profit off anything again. It’s especially hopeless for those whose work is easily digitized and accessed free of charge.

— Author Tim Kreider on not getting paid for one’s work