Eighty percent of all music listening happens in lean back mode where someone or something plays the music for you. That's a fact. I am not sure where I saw it, but I believe it to be true based on my own music listening experience.
That's why I haven't found iTunes, Spotify, Rdio, Rhapsody, or any of the "on demand" experiences particularly inspiring. I've used all of them at one time or another and our family still logs a fair bit of time on Rdio and Rhapsody (which we've had for something like thirteen years now).
But there is something magical about logging into a music service and having music start playing that you love and you don't need to do anything to make it happen. It's also true that these lean back experiences are better for music discovery. That's the role that old fashioned radio has been playing in the music business for as long as I've been alive.
I have been using several rooms in Turntable (my favorite being Indie While You Work) for the past year for this purpose. And it has served it incredibly well.
But Turntable is not available on Sonos and the hack where I airplay into my Sonos from my laptop is just that, a hack that isnt' ideal. So I've been looking for a great lean back experience on the Sonos for a long time. And Pandora isn't that for me and has never been.
This spring I noticed that Songza was available on Sonos in the "Sonos Labs" area. We've had Songza on the Sonos in our homes for at least three months now and it has quickly become the most used music service on Sonos in our homes.
And the reason is a feature they call Concierge. Instead of asking you what artist you like as Pandora does, Songza notices what time of day it is and then asks you what you are doing. I am writing this post at 6:53am and Songza's Concierge looks like this on my Sonos (pardon the photography, I had a tough time with the glare off the screen of the iPad):
When I select "Working Out", I see this screen:
When I select "Eclectic Workout Mixes", I get this screen:
Then you select your playlist and the music starts playing.
All of these playlists have been constructed by real humans, so it's more like a real DJ on the radio playing music for you than an algorithm in the cloud somewhere. I prefer that as I mentioned in that link on Pandora.
I've turned all my kids onto Songza and they love it. And they've turned their friends onto it and their friends love it too. So I think Songza works for all ages and all types of music.
But don't listen to me. Give it a try. Songza is available on the web, on Android, on iOS, and on Sonos. It's awesome on Sonos so if you have one, I strongly encourage you to add Songza to it.
