02 July 2014

Google Buys Songza



Google announced that it has acquired Songza, a music streaming service that offers music curated by experts. Songza is only available in the US and Canada. It's free and supported by ads, but you can disable ads by paying $3.99 a month.



"We aren't planning any immediate changes to Songza, so it will continue to work like usual for existing users. Over the coming months, we'll explore ways to bring what you love about Songza to Google Play Music. We'll also look for opportunities to bring their great work to the music experience on YouTube and other Google products. In the meantime, check out their service on Android or iOS to find a playlist for any mood you're in — whether you're feeling a little mellow or a lot funky," suggests Google.






Songza's site has a page about the acquisition: "Today, we're thrilled to announce that we're becoming part of Google. We can't think of a better company to join in our quest to provide the perfect soundtrack for everything you do. No immediate changes to Songza are planned, other than making it faster, smarter, and even more fun to use."



There's also a Googley logo:






Curated playlists are very popular nowadays. That's the main feature of the Beats Music service recently acquired by Apple.



"Stating that its playlists are made by music experts, the service recommends various playlists based on time of day and mood or activity. Songza offers playlists for activities such as waking up, working out, commuting, concentrating, unwinding, entertaining, and sleeping. Users can vote songs up or down, and the service will adapt to the user's personal music preferences." (Wikipedia)






The New York Times reports that "Google paid more than $39 million for Songza".

Hangouts Interface for Google Voice Migration



Google already announced that Google Voice's functionality will be added to Hangouts. Here's the interface that will be used for migration when this feature will be publicly released: "Migrate Google Voice to Hangouts. Receive voicemail and send text messages in Hangouts".






This dialog can actually be displayed in Hangouts, but the underlying functionality can't be enabled for now. There's an Android app called #DebugAllTheThings that enables debugging features from various Google apps like Play Store, Play Music, Play Books and Hangouts. It requires root, most debugging features aren't useful for regular users and some of them can even cause issues.



To display this message, install #DebugAllTheThings, enable "Hangouts" in the new app, restart the phone, open Hangouts, tap the menu, select "Debug" (this menu item is added by the #DebugAllTheThings app) and then "activate all butter bars".






{ Thanks, Jérôme. }