Songza shutting down in January, features will be folded into Play Music

Google acquired music streaming service Songza in June of last year, and Songza’s unique recommended playlist feature was integrated early on into Play Music. Today, the Songza team has announced (via The Verge) that the rest of the service will be shut down on January 31st, and that Google Play Music’s free tier will soon be coming to Canada…

The free tier, can be found at the top of the Play Music app on Android, iOS, and Web, was built off Songza’s main “Concierge” feature. It offers curated music playlists based on your mood and time of day with audio ads and image pop-ups after every few songs. Since its launch a year ago, it has expanded to 13 counties. Songza had 5.5 million users at the time of acquisition and a large majority of them were in Canada. Before it could be shut down officially, its founders felt that Play Music should expand to that country first.

Current Songza users will soon see a prompt to merge their Songza and Play Music account. All of their listening history, playlists, and thumb ups/downs will be imported to Play Music. Songza’s founders are all still at Google and its former CEO is managing the Play Music team, so former users should feel comfortable that the app they love will live on. Google’s music offering is still fractured between Play Music and YouTube Music, but the former will soon get podcast support.