Google Acquires Songza

After months of speculation, Google has officially acquired Songza, the music streaming service that uses information about the user to connect them with curated playlists. It’s a bold move by Google, one that puts them squarely into not only the music space, but the data space; Sonza collects mountains of data about what types of music people listen to based on the time of day so that they can accurately serve them the right playlists at the right time. For a company like Google, whose stated purpose is to seamlessly integrate technology into people’s lives, Songza makes perfect sense as an acquisition, and it’s not unreasonable to foresee playlist integration into Google Now – for instance, “I see your flight is delayed, let me pull up a playlist to calm you down.” – and across Google’s many platforms more broadly.