If you are looking for a little distraction during your day, Songza.com is the site for you. Songza is the concept of 23-year-old Aza Raskin to bring virtually any song to your fingertips. Songza allows users to search, play, share, rate and much more for an insane amount of music. The interface is as simple as they come with a search field and submit button. Once you find what you are looking for, simply click it for more options. Aza Raskin states “I am proud to announce the release of Songza, a music search engine and Internet jukebox. Songza solves the related problems of “I want to hear a song” and “I want to share a song with a friend.” Released on November 8, its popularity is growing rapidly: We’re poised to reach one million songs played within just a week of launching Songza.

Songza is also an interface showcase. I’ve used the interface principles discussed here on the Humanized blog to design Songza to be humane, slick, and viral. Play with the interface for a bit, and you’ll find habituatable pie-menus instead of slow linear menus; an inviting design that uses only two icons, both of which act as illustrations for words; an incredibly high density of content and a correspondingly low amount of interaction; undo instead of warnings; and transparent messages that don’t break your train of thought.

Ironically, there’s a lot that went into making Songza so simply. Achieving such a high level of simplification required a lot of code, in part because we couldn’t just use standard widgets. It was worth it, though. You can’t be better without being different — I think Songza is both.”