Songza Launches Paid Premium Service, Partners With Home Shopping Network

As a regular Songza user, I can't remember ever being interrupted by an in-stream commercial. That's about to change. Over the weekend, the startup launched Club Songza, a $.99 cent per week ad free version of the popular mood and situation based streaming music app. In addition to no ads, Club Songza offers twice as many skips and special access to premium content from it's curators.

An email from the company to some users over the weekend read: “You can now subscribe to Club Songza to go ad-free and get double the skips on Songza’s apps for iPhone, Android, Sonos, and the web. Only $0.99 per week. (Cheaper than a soda!)” Songza has 4.8 million regular users.

Home Shopping Network Partnership

Another new piece of the Songza monetization strategy is brand partnerships that go beyond advertising. Last week, Songza and Home Shopping Netwiork parent company HSN partnered to provide background music for the site's msotly older female shoppers. The deal includes HSN.com, with 12 million unique visitors monthly, Ballard Designs, Frontgate and Garnet Hill.

“Streaming music is an important part of today’s pop culture,” Andy Sheldon, Chief Creative Officer of HSNI told Billboard. “So, it’s a logical next step for us to find a way to incorporate music that targets our customers across our various brands in a way that not only relates to what we’re doing from a programming perspective but also works with whatever our customers are doing at a given time.”