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Songza, the music streaming company reportedly in talks with Google about a $15 million acquisition, started right here in Chicago. The now New York-based company is the brainchild of Aza Raskin, a University of Chicago graduate.
Raskin created Songza in 2007 while sitting in a Chicago coffee shop: he wanted to share a song with his friend across the table but had no way to do it. From that moment, music streaming and recommendation platform Songza was born.
In 2008, Amie Street acquired Songza and then sold it to Amazon for an undisclosed amount. Now, Songza is led by CEO Elias Roman and will be the newest member of the Google family.
“What a crazy ride for a company I started over two weekends in a Chicago Starbucks,” Raskin Tweeted yesterday.
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Raskin, who is the son of human-computer interface Jef Raskin, also started software company Humanized out of Ravenswood to develop its Enso software line. A founding member of Mozilla Labs, he also headed up healthy living tech company Massive Health in San Francisco.
Although he has worked on a number of ventures since starting Songza in Chicago, it remains one of Raskin’s most viral creations. “You can listen to almost anything on Songza,” Raskin said about the young company during its first stages. “It’s very immediate. It’s a delightful and very sexy page.”
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