Google Inc. share price up, acquires Songza Media Inc. to boost music services and become more competitive

Google Inc. announced it will acquire the startup Songza Media Inc. in an attempt to boost its music services and better compete with its main rival Apple Inc. Neither one of the companies, however, revealed the price of the takeover.

Google commented on the services provided by Songza in the announcement, which was cited by Bloomberg: “They’ve built a great service which uses contextual expert-curated playlists to give you the right music at the right time.” The company revealed that it has no intentions of changing the music service which selects tunes that are appropriate for each user based on their personal activities and preferences.

The music application was released by Songza in 2010 and currently has about 5.5 million users, which is a relatively small number, especially in comparison to Pandora Media Inc.s 75 million listeners and the 40-million customer base of both Spotify Ltd and Apples iTunes Radio. However, Songza is popular for its technology that uses different variables which allow users to personalize the application and create their own music playlists.

Google Inc. has revealed that it intends to explore various ways to use and incorporate some aspects of the application provided by Songza into its already existing streaming music service over the months that are still to come.

The company has been recently striving to improve its music services amid the fierce rivalry from Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

Songza also made an announcement about the takeover on its website, saying that “No immediate changes to Songza are planned, other than making it faster, smarter, and even more fun to use.”

Google Inc. rose by 1.28% on Tuesday to close the session at 582.67 dollars per share. The company is valued at $395.98 billion. According to the Financial Times, the 41 analysts offering 12-month price targets for Google Inc have a median target of $665.00, with a high estimate of $750.00 and a low estimate of $525.00. The median estimate represents a 13.74% increase from the last price of $584.67.