Songza is an online music service that offers you the chance to listen to millions of songs online for free. It does this not through advertising or exclusive deals with the record companies, but by simply streaming the audio of a song that is already on YouTube. Simple, brilliant, and devastatingly effective.

What this means is that if you type in the name of any music artists you care to mention, there’s a high probability of at least a few results showing up. This includes studio versions of songs, live recordings from big concerts and even infamous interviews.

In essence, by the use of a ingenious sleight of hand, Songza is the ultimate online jukebox. The userface is simple, providing just what you need without any graphic-heavy nonsense slowing your listening pleasure down.

Click on a search result and you are given the option to play, share, rate, or add to playlist. By joining Songza, your playlist will be saved, and there’s even a shuffle button to ensure you can leave your computer and still be treated to your favourite songs one after the other.

Songza is by no means the first such service on the Web, with Muxtape and Grooveshark immediately springing to mind as alternatives. But while Muxtape has been taken offline due to attention from the RIAA, and Grooveshark being quite clunky to use, the way seems clear for Songza to gain massive popularity.

Indeed, according to The New York Times, the site is playing host to around 120,000 song plays each day, which equates to around 5 million a month. And knowledge of Songza is spreading like wildfire amongst college students eager for their new music fix.

The only remaining question is whether Songza is legal or not. If the latter is true, then it could go the same way as Muxtape and Seeqpod have, facing legal action from the music industry.

Songza does pay fees for the publishing rights to each song to organizations such as the BMI and ASCAP, which will help should any lawsuit be forthcoming. But in failing to pay licensing fees to any of the individual record labels, it is still at risk of action being brought against it.

The other defences are: the music is only available to stream, and not downloadable; the first port of call for any copyright dispute should surely be the Google-owned YouTube as that is where the majority of the music available on Songza is leached from. But will these defences be enough to prevent any trouble in the first place?

I love Songza, with the sheer amount of music available on the site being wrapped up in an ultra-simple interface, but I fear that as its popularity grows, the vultures will begin circling.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 2:10 pm under Internet, Music, Opinion, YouTube.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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