Music Upstart Songza Co-Founders On Battling Pandora, Spotify

Ever since I met the Songza guys at New York Tech Meetup, I’ve wanted to learn more about the app. It’s the first music service that I’ve been excited to use, mostly because it removes the work entirely. I’ve been curious about a few things, like how Songza plans to combat the big boys, namely Pandora, and how exactly these guys are making any money. Remember, Songza has no audio ads, no limits, and is free to download.

Co-founders Elias Roman and Eric Davich sat down with me to discuss this and more, saying that the only way to enter into a space as crowded as streaming music is to bring something totally different to the table. They said that they see a really big gap between music subscription services and radio services, in that using a Spotify can be hard for some people and Pandora can get stale. What Songza does is eliminate the mental math of figuring out exactly what you want to listen to.

But the possibilities extend far beyond that. Songza is collecting tons of data on the way we listen to music and what we’re doing when we choose a particular genre or playlist. Since Concierge is meant to get smarter the longer you use the feature, this data should be invaluable in fine-tuning the app even more.