It’s been rumored for weeks, but Google just announced that it has acquired Songza. It will use the acquisition to improve Google Play Music.

“They’ve built a great service which uses contextual expert-curated playlists to give you the right music at the right time,” Google says. “We aren’t planning any immediate changes to Songza, so it will continue to work like usual for existing users. Over the coming months, we’ll explore ways to bring what you love about Songza to Google Play Music.”

“We’ll also look for opportunities to bring their great work to the music experience on YouTube and other Google products,” the company adds.

In a message on its blog, Songza says:

You know why we love building Songza? Because you trust us to make every moment of your day better — and that’s a pretty huge honor. Today, we’re thrilled to announce that we’re becoming part of Google. We can’t think of a better company to join in our quest to provide the perfect soundtrack for everything you do. No immediate changes to Songza are planned, other than making it faster, smarter, and even more fun to use.

Songza is currently available for Android and iOS. It added support for Google’s Chromecast in December.

Here’s an interview we did with Songza co-founder and CEO Elias Roman a couple years back.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but $15 million has been mentioned as a possible price. Update: The New York Times is now reporting that the price was over $39 million – a pretty significant difference.

Image via Songza