Songza Stealing Pandora’s Music Thunder

by Doug Smith on June 12, 2012

One of the first apps anyone gets on their mobile smartphone is Pandora. It’s a free music player that allows you play music from genre’s that you want to hear. You can listen to their stations or find an artist or song. The problem is that the experience has been polluted with ads and overall is lacking in features. If you are bored with Pandora and want to try something new, have a listen to Songza. Not only does it have a web based presence like Pandora, but it does not have any audio ads what so ever. You can sign in with Facebook which is nice and start out listening to their “concierge feature “ which allows you to listen to music based on what ever activity you are doing like:

Summertime
An Energy Boost
Office Crowd Pleasers
Brand New Music
Work or Study
Timeless Genres

One of the categories I was interested in was Acoustic Guitar Explorations which I am really liking by the way but low and behold what did I find? An Ad. It’s not as intrusive as the Pandora Ads’ however:

All in all I think it is a better app, it’s free and the UI is nicer than Pandora as well. Check it out for iOS only right now. Android and Windows Phone listeners will have to wait for an app or listen on the web for now.

BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield created a cool video demonstrating how Songza works and how he feels Songza is hurting Pandora where it hurts most, in the wallet. Pandora stocks are trading lower .81 cents or 7.3% at $10.34. Richard says that since June 7th when Songza launched it’s iPad app, it’s been downloaded for the tablet over 542,000 times.

Head on over to iTunes to grab a copy here.