I don’t know about you, but I am really bad at making playlist. First I usually think about making a playlist about the time I need one and don’t have time to make it. Second I am really bad at naming playlist, so I have playlist that have names like my favorite songs, or something obscure like Fun Time or Son of Cash. When I created those playlist I am sure the titles had meaning, but after a while I forget what they were, so I tend to create multiple playlist with a lot of the same artists. I am sure I am not the only one that either hates making playlist or is bad at it and that is where Songza comes in.
Songza is available on iOS, Android and through their Web site. The company Songza is made up of music experts, software engineers and “absurdly talented dancer” They have gather together over 1,880 playlist created both internally but also by artist, producers, DJs and other people involved with the music industry. You can either sign in through Facebook or you can create an account for Songza. Once you have sign in on an iOS device the first page you see is divided into three sections. The bottom section has five tabs, Concierge, My Playlists, People, Explore and Settings. With Concierge highlighted the middle section will show six blocks with activities based on day and time. The top section is where you can adjust the day and time, so for example if it’s Friday afternoon and you are driving home early you could set it for Friday evening and you will get playlist like Cure for Road Rage or Post-work Celebration. If you tap on My Playlist at the bottom you will see the most recent playlist you have listen to, any that you tagged as favorites and if you follow someone on Songza you will also see their play list. Under the Popular tab you have the featured playlist, what’s trending and all-time popular. Although the Concierge is great when you want to be really lazy. For the me the real power of Songza comes out when you hit the Explore button (aka as Discovery on Android). From there you can find playlist based on Activities, Moods, Decades, Culture and Record Clerk. There are probably more than 50 activities listed everything including coding, reading in a coffee shop, road trip, house party and between the sheets just to name a few. Under moods you will find aggressive, earth, gloomy, seductive, trippy and many more. What ever mood you are in Songza will have a playlist for you. Under culture you will find playlist with songs that are being blogged about and are trending on sites like Beatport. Gorilla vs Bear and Pitchfork. If you are looking for best of lists this is where you will find them. Finally under explore there is Record-store Clerk, where you will find list that were created by artist, record labels, legendary producers, great composers and yes some of the list were created by actual record store clerks. There is an option to contribute your own playlist however because of licensing restriction you can’t listen to your own playlist.
You can share a song to Facebook or Twitter or by email. There is no ability to share to Google Plus on iOs devices. If the song is available you can purchase it through the iTunes store on any iOS device. I couldn’t find a buying option on my Android device or the web site. I have only been playing around with Songza for a little over a day, but so far I love it. I did run into a couple of problems though. The first is Songza is different on Android then it is on iOs. iOs is on app version 5.10 while Android is only at 3,0,10, so iOs seems a little more polished. On Android, Concierge is missing and instead of Explore they use Discovery. When you save a playlist on iOS it automatically goes into your favorites list. On Android you can put it in your favorites list or you can create collections. However when I did try to create a new collection on Android Songza would crash and I would have to log back in. Also there does seem to be more buffering on Android then iOs. Despite these problems I do recommend trying Songza out. It is free so there is nothing to lose. Robert Scoble (aka the Scobleizer) interviewed the founders and the video is available on YouTube