Find the Perfect Playlist With Songza

Find the Perfect Playlist With Songza:
Finding and choosing music to listen to is an easy task for a lucky few. For the rest of us, choosing music is often an annoyance. Whether you are tired of your collection or just don’t know what you’re in the mood to listen to, sometimes it’s good to step back from iTunes and let someone else do the heavy lifting. That’s where an app like Songza comes into play.
Songza labels itself a music concierge. It’s an online playlist based music application, full of playlists for different events, moods, decades and genres. Songza is 100% free AND audio ad-free, a rarity in the world of online music streaming. Read on to learn more about this new music application, like details on how it works and what I think of it thus far.

Finding Music

If you decide to give Songza a go, my guess is that the first thing that you’ll want to do is find a playlist to check out. This is easy to do with Songza, and you’re presented with three different ways in which to do so. The first option is to try out the music concierge option. This is definitely the most unique feature.
First, the app asks you to input the date and approximate time. It does utilize location to automatically select the correct time, but you can change it as you like. I put in Tuesday, late morning, and was presented with 5 different options – work/study, brand new music, just waking up, popular genres and taking the day off. I chose just waking up and was presented with some genres to choose from – pop, hip-hop, indie, country and oldies. After selecting pop, I was presented with three last options to choose an actual playlist. The concierge is a great way to let Songza do the heavy lifting for you, presenting you with just a few select options.

Here, I’m utilizing the music concierge. I’m down to the final step – choosing the actual playlist.

Next up is the ability to explore by popularity. This option is simple and limited. You are presented with the 20 most popular playlists and have the option to view by currently trending, popular this week or popular this year. If the concierge isn’t suiting you, this is the easiest way to just select an arbitrary playlist to play, especially if you are in the mood for top 40 type music.

Currently popular playlists on Songza.

Last but not least is the ability to browse or explore all of the music. If you click on the browse all tab, you can view playlists by genre, activity, mood, decade, culture or record-store clerk. Genre is self-explanatory, with a laundry list of genres. Activity is great if the concierge doesn’t provide whatever activity you are participating in at that time. Mood offers playlists for instances when you’re feeling angsty, seductive, gloomy, spacey and more.
Decade is easy enough to understand, offering decades from the 1930’s up to today. Culture includes a variety of playlists based upon various “best of” lists, holidays, sporting events and cultural phenomena. Lastly, record-store clerk provides the quirkiest collections, with playlists that fit into categories like “this will piss off your parents” and “world music you can’t play at a cocktail party.” I really enjoy the browse all section of Songza. It’s got quite an interesting variety of ways to find and select music, great for when I don’t have a particular artist in mind to search for.

I’m exploring all the different ways playlists are categorized.

Even though it’s not a major feature, you can still search for a particular artist and find playlists that they are featured in. Just use the search bar at the top of the screen.

Enjoying Music

Now that you have poked around and found a playlist you like, it’s time to give it a good listen. I’m listening to a Playlist by the Songza team itself (as many playlists are), called “Songs From Apple Commercials.” While listening, all of the playback controls that you expect from an online, streaming music application are available. You can play or pause at will, and also skip forward (but not backward). The traditional thumbs up and thumbs down options are also available, but do not have as much impact as you might expect. Songza is a playlist-based application, so even if you give a song the thumbs down rating, it still appears in the playlist. The thumbs up and down ratings do, however, have an impact upon music suggested to you by the concierge.

The various options to look at when you are listening to a playlist. Playback controls are in the top right corner.

Another great part about Songza is the limited role that advertisements and licensing restrictions play in your listening experience. On Songza, advertisements are limited solely to visual ads. Your listening experience is never going to be interrupted by an ad, which is fairly rare these days. Licensing restrictions are present in a few different ways. First, you can skip only six songs per hour. This is also why you can only skip forward, never backward. Licensing restrictions also mean that you can’t listen to any playlists that you have contributed to Songza. All in all, however, it’s not too much of an impact.

Ads are scarce and rarely invasive – here you can see the small bit of ad space on the screen.

Lastly, I want to mention the social aspects of Songza’s listening experience. First, share options are present throughout the page where you listen to the playlist, making it easy to share what you are listening to via Facebook or Twitter. Social comments are also present on each playlist page, done via Facebook. Facebook Connect is also utilized to show you what your friends are listening to at the moment. Additionally, the playlist you are listening to continues even as you explore other pages within Songza, so you can also choose to explore the profile page of the playlist creator. There, you can explore their details, check out their other playlists or even follow them.

Exploring Songza’s creator profile – you can see all the playlists they have created to this point.

Contributing Music

Last but not least, let’s talk about contributing playlists. If you ever feel so inclined, it is quite easy to add a playlist to Songza. You just have to create a list of at least ten songs, by at least six different artists. You find songs to add by simply typing in the song name and/or artist name on the playlist creation page. It is absolutely the easiest that making a playlist can be. You don’t even have to upload an image – it’s all compiled from the album art comprising the playlist. A major downside is, of course, that you can’t listen to your own playlists.

Creating a playlist is a piece of cake. I just wish I could listen to my own!

Another downside of making a playlist on Songza is that you just don’t get a lot of potential views and listens. Songza’s music concierge focuses primarily on the 3,000 or so playlists created by the Songza team. User-generated playlists are harder to find, and there really just isn’t as much of a focus on them.

Final Thoughts

Songza is one of my new favorite music streaming applications. A lot of the time, I just don’t know what I’m in the mood for. On days like those, I can now turn to Songza. The concierge is a great way to find a variety of music for many different occasions. I can also search by holiday or event to find a ton of playlists for any situation.
Unfortunately, Songza is not always going to be my go-to application. While Songza is great when I don’t know what to choose, sometimes I know exactly what I want and would like a bigger variety of choices. In that situation, I would not choose Songza as their limited selection of featured playlists can sometimes get a bit old. Additionally, if I want to make a playlist that is sure to get some listens, Songza is definitely not my app of choice. There are other playlist-based applications out there which offer a much better system to showcase a variety of playlist creators.
Those are my thoughts on Songza. I’m curious, however, to hear yours. Have you tried Songza? What do you think of the service? Share your thoughts in the comments below.