Popular radio streamer Songza acquired by Google

Search engine behemoth Google has been expanding into various fields of technology and acquiring sites to widen its reachover the past few years. Google Glasses, Google Maps and Youtube are but a few of the most prominent examples; on Tuesday the company made yet another buy of a promising site by acquiring Songza, a popular radio streaming service. Songza was launched in 2010 as a site which allowed its users to create and listen to free playlists to complement different days and activities.

Google already launched its own subscription music streaming service for users back in 2013, called Google Play Music All Access—but the company said the two services are meant to be independent of each other in the meantime while it “explore[s] ways to bring what you love about Songza to Google Play Music”—hinting that in the forseeable future, the two services may be merged into one seamless music streaming service for all of its users.

The company also hinted that it planned to integrate some of Songza’s aspects and features into other acquired sites and Google features. “We’ll also look for opportunities to bring their great work to the music experience on YouTube and other Google products,” Google stated—a strong move given how many users give Youtube its billions of daily hits based on music videos and newly released lyrical clips for tracks from new artists.

However, when it came to the subject of Songza’s immediate future after the acquisition and any short-term tweaks to Songza’s business model and technology, the company simply stated that no changes to Songza’s present services would be made “other than making it faster, smarter, and even more fun to use.”

Google’s acquisition of Songza comes right after Apple’s own buy of Beats Music, a popular music streamer and headphones business, for $3 billion in May—Google declined to state their own acquisition price. Songza, Google Play Music and Beats are but three of many streaming services out in a very competitive market—Spotify, Rdio, Amazon Prime, Pandora and Rhapsody are other well-known streamers that already exist and serve users who want to listen to music online.