Google in talks to acquire music curation service Songza, report says

PanARMENIAN.Net - Google is in talks to acquire Songza, a 6-year-old Long Island City-based music curation and streaming service with 5.5 million active users, the New York Post reported, citing two sources.

Songza competes with Spotify and its 24 million active users, and Pandora, which has 77 million active users.

“Google is offering them around $15 million — the question is does Songza take it?” the Post quoted one source close to conversations as saying.

A second source said the figure on the table was much higher and that Google CEO Larry Page would have to beat out several suitors.

Certainly $15 million sounds small when placed next to Spotify, which has a $4 billion valuation, and Pandora, which has a market cap of $5 billion, sources noted, according to the Post.

Mesa Global has been tapped to work on the Songza deal.

While some streaming companies curate playlists by, perhaps, taking a subscriber’s choice of an artist, like Adele, and offering up songs that are similar to the singer’s style, Songza creates playlists that take into account what people are doing while they’re listening to music, the Post says.

The Songza home page has suggestions for playlists, like “working in an office,” or “boosting your energy.”

The service won a $4.7 million investment round from Amazon and Justin Bieber’s manager, Scooter Braun.

Google’s moves follow Apple’s $3 billion deal to acquire Beats Electronics, which houses an audio/headset company as well as a nascent streaming music service called Beats Music.