To most of us, music is integral to our way of life. We hear it at home, on the radio in the car, waiting for appointments – even in places like the elevator. Music is all around us. More than likely, we’re in two modes of listening: Hearing what someone else chose from a popular mix or some other targeted way or hearing what we’ve chosen sitting on our computers or listening devices. But, with the advent of music listening services like Spotify, Rdio, and Pandora – a new world of music discovery has opened up. How is it possible that this could have been improved upon? Songza looks to have done just that.

Summary: The music streaming service Songza is a novel way to listen too, and discover new music. I take a look at what this service offers.

The idea behind how Songza works is based on the kind of mood you might be in at the moment. Songza keeps it really simple. Once you get to the main Songza page, you get a few choices. Brand New Music, Unwinding after a Long Day, Bedtime, Popular Genres, and Reading. The choices change depending on the day of week, and even time of the day.

After clicking on one of those, you get another list of music categories to choose from. if  you decide pick “Unwinding after a Long Day”, this comes up:

Even more specific, you can choose more genre-related flavors. When picking “Atmospheric Indie”, you get:

Choosing one of these starts playing music that likely fits your mood better than anything I’ve seen to this point. What’s cool here too, is that you’re going to hear music that might not have been on your radar that could lead you to discovering a new artist or group. Music discovery is an interesting and tricky problem to solve, and one that technology has been trying to address since the very beginning. 

The music playlists in each of these groups is, apparently, curated by music experts. Not much information was provided on what experts they use, but it appears the experts are staffed by the company. You aren’t required to create an account and can just start playing music right away – but, creating one will let you save playlists and interact with friends.
This is great because we often look for music to fit out mood. We want to hear something in the background while we might be working. Perhaps we’re working on a project and want something that might play in the background. maybe we want stuff that’s suitable for working out? Most of the time this is pretty difficult to find. With Songza, the promise of having music better catered to our situation or moods appears to have been fulfilled.

Songza is also available as a mobile application on the iPhone, Android, and Kindle Fire platforms. I should also note: Songza is currently a U.S. based service not available in Canada (yet?).