Songza App Review

By Laura Fouquette

Following in the footsteps of Pandora and 8track, the Songza app for iPhone and Android provides traditional music and downloadable playlists with an unexpected twist.  Unlike other apps, Songza streams music to suit your current mood and activity.  With a feature called ‘Concierge,’ the app finds the perfect playlist.  After the user inputs the day of the week and time of day, Concierge offers six possible activities.  For example, on a Friday night, the options include A Sweaty Dance Party, Driving, Bedtime, Putting on Your Party Dress, Romance, and Studying.  After picking one of those options, there are six genres to choose from, each including three playlists for you to choose from.

If that wasn’t enough, playlists can be searched for by genre, activity, mood, decade, artist, and culture as well.  Songza has a myriad of wonderful breakup playlists from virtually every genre, including “Songs for Sobbing” and “Crying on My Keyboard.” Every song has a thumbs up and thumbs down option to better craft future playlists to each individuals’ personal taste.  However, it only allows five songs to be skipped in a certain amount of time on one playlist.  If you like a song you hear, you can click the shopping cart, redirecting you to iTunes where you can purchase the song for your personal music library. Songza could be a great resource for students who need to listen to music while studying or doing homework.  It has “Studying” playlists with or without lyrics, depending on your level of concentration, from genres ranging from Jazz to Electronic.

After playing around with the app for 24 hours and using it at different times of the day, I am still finding new playlists.  I started listening to a playlist entitled “Indie Meets Pop on the Dance Floor” but changed to “Studying (No Lyrics)” to finish up.  Songza also claims that all of its playlists are made by a network of “music experts” to help you find new music.  Because it is an entirely free app without monthly usage restrictions, it is definitely worth a gander.  Songza is also free of those unfortunate audio commercial interruptions found commonly on Pandora.  This free app is sure to impress your friends with your newfound incredible music taste.