Better Know a FlashFWD Nominee – Songza

By Carolyn Heneghan

VOTE FOR SONGZA FOR BEST IN DISCOVERY HERE

Ever sit and stare at your massive music library, wishing you could just blink in a playlist to suit what you’re doing or feeling at that moment? Maybe you’re studying for a major test or finishing up an important project for work. Or maybe you’re throwing a party, having some friends over or just want to get pumped up for the day or night. Without a program like Songza, keep staring.

Songza and their Music Concierge endeavor strive to enhance whatever you’re doing or feeling through music. They want you to study and work harder and with more focus, to relax better after a long week and to get fired up when you’re entertaining a crowd or trying to run that extra mile.

Whether you’re in front of your PC or using a mobile device, your Music Concierge will be there to serve you wherever and whenever you need him. Simplicity is the name of the game, and the team at Songza has worked hard to present specially curated playlists for all kinds of activities. They also aim to make these playlists easily and quickly accessible with as few clicks as possible.

For example, on a Tuesday afternoon, Songza will bring up selectable activities like “Boosting Your Energy,” “Working (No Lyrics)” or “Brand New Music.” On a Thursday morning, the Music Concierge might pull up activities like “Waking Up Happy,” “Singing in the Shower” or “Working Out.” When you select one of these activities, say “Working (No Lyrics),” you’ll then find suggestions for genres of your playlist, like Ambient, Jazz Masters, or Electronic. Click on any of these, and you have a selection of playlists to choose from. That’s all you have to do to find some of the best music for your exact moment, brought to you by more than 30 music pros who are all experts in their specific genres.

So who are the brains behind such a useful and innovative music platform? We caught up with Eric Davich, co-founder and Chief Content Officer of Songza, to find out more about the birth of the Music Concierge idea and the 15-person company who brought it to life.

SoundCtrl: Where did the original idea for Songza come from?

Eric Davich: In 2010, we sold our first company, Amy Street, to Amazon. We wanted to concentrate on streaming full-time. We started that by launching Songza, which was a social radio. What that meant was that, at the time, people would suggest playlist themes and anyone could add songs to the playlist. That kind of got out of hand—when you let anyone add songs, everyone might not have the same taste or follow the same rules and guidelines. If you had a playlist, you could make it open to the community or close it so no one could add songs.

The more we curated the playlists, the more people responded to them and the more we realized that in our lives, we used these playlists to enhance our daily life and activities—not just watching the screen or watching the record spin, as they say. So we were listening to these playlists while we were working out, and we created a playlist to make working out better, things like that. As we did more activities, moods, situations, eventually we decided that what we needed was a big library of playlists unlike anything that existed anywhere else on the web.

In 2011, our first mission was to build expertly curated playlists based on a record store clerk to make a really great browsing experience for when you knew what you wanted to listen to or what activities you wanted to do. And that still exists today on our website, where you can find barbecuing and scroll through a list of over two dozen playlists perfect for barbecuing.

The more we showed it to people, the more we realized that they were having a hard time finding the perfect playlist in five seconds or less, which is what we wanted to do. Thus began the concept of the Music Concierge. Basically the idea was that instead of coming to Songza and having to type search terms to tell us what you were doing or browsing, we present you with several different options based on what we knew about you, time of day, device, etc.

Since March 2012, it really caught on quickly—first with the tech scene. The more good press we had, the more tech folks got into it and the more prominent it became. In June of last year we launched the iPad app and Apple featured it on the front page of the iTunes store which took it to a whole new level in a matter of days. We had 1.5 million downloads in 10 days since we were featured on the Apple iTunes store and became the number one music app and number 32 in all categories. It was sort of a game changing occurrence for us. We’ve been growing incredibly quickly ever since.

SC: Where does all the music on the app come from, and how did you choose it amid an endless amount of music available?

ED: We have a catalog of all the music that’s been commercially released digitally, so we have a 20 million song catalog. The songs that get played are all handpicked by our team of about 30 music experts, so each playlist is curated by an individual, and that individual is usually an expert in that genre of music or lifestyle category and knows the best songs for that particular situation based on their knowledge and experience.

SC: What is your work environment like?

ED: Everyone from Songza works in our “bare bones warehouse style office.” We have a big open room that most of us work in and a couple of offices where we pop in for phone calls. It’s a very light atmosphere—there’s always music playing, and we’re always asking each other for feedback on what we’re doing. It’s very interactive, and there’s a really great community and friendly aspect to the way that we work here. And of course we’re all kind of weird people, and there’s a lot of personality and charm rather than a soho-chic-cool office with fancy furniture. Also recently we had some artwork made that have some of the icons for our Music Concierge printed on canvas. One of our users is an artist, and on his own time, he designed a picture of our mascot, the Songza monster, so we had that printed out, and we have that hanging in our office as well.

SC: What has been your favorite part about working on Songza?

ED: We have a great team, and I think that being a 15-person company competing with gargantuan multi-million/billion-dollar companies in the music space and being able to disrupt that space with a small team of quirky people has been huge for us. And that’s been the most fun. We’ve been hard at work making the best music-listening experience that you can have digitally since 2006, when we started Amy Street, so it took us a long time for each massive plan. To be the same team, same founding team throughout and being able to see our vision through has really paid off for us.