Songza, the online and mobile music service, has announced the incorporation of Songza Canada and the opening of its Toronto office.

“Given the culture and lifestyle focus of the service, we realized we wouldn’t reach as many people as we could without a strong local presence, and the Songza experience wouldn’t be as relevant to consumers,” Elias Roman, co-founder and CEO, Songza, tells MiC.

He says improving the reach of Songza in Canada through marketing and business development and growing its relevance by curating more local content through its own team and its Canadian partners will be the key pillars of Songza Canada’s strategy going forward.

This includes working with Canadian tastemakers and celebrities like Justin Bieber, Michael Buble and the Vancouver Canucks to have them create curated playlists.

Songza has also announced the founding team for Songza Canada, naming Vanessa Thomas, former head of sales for Nielsen Music North America as managing director.

Meanwhile Philip Schlatter, who has been a sales exec with Kijiji, Telus and 24/7 Media, has been appointed to run Songza Canada’s sales.

Going forward, says Roman, Songza Canada will work with advisors and third parties while it looks to grow its Toronto staff, with a focus on building up its curation and sales teams. The brand will continue working with Oboxmedia handling its ad inventory for the time being but it will be up to the new Canadian sales team to decide whether or not to continue that partnership going forward.

For advertisers, the incorporation of Songza Canada, means getting to work with Songza’s team directly in Canada for the first time.

“”From an advertising perspective, creating branded experiences around curated playlists is hard and inefficient to do through third-party ad networks [because they’re just not set up to sell non-standard inventory],” says Roman. “Songza employees, and sales partners like Obox, are best positioned to build these brand experiences with clients.””

With Songza’s Branded Moments native advertising solution, advertisers can sponsor life moments, like working out or cleaning the house, and create branded playlists, which they can also run traditional display and pre-roll ads around.

Songza’s Canadian clients to date have included Telus, Nissan and Mr. Clean, among others.