Spotify to Acquire AI Text-to-Voice Platform Sonantic

Music and podcast purveyor Spotify on Monday (June 13) announced it is acquiring Sonantic, which specializes in using artificial intelligence to convincingly replicate human voices from text.

Spotify said in the announcement that it is buying the platform to improve its user experience through the implementation of “compelling, nuanced, and stunningly realistic voices from text.”

“We’re really excited about the potential to bring Sonantic’s AI voice technology onto the Spotify platform and create new experiences for our users,”  Ziad Sultan, Spotify’s vice president of personalization, said in a prepared statement. “This integration will enable us to engage users in a new and even more personalized way.”

Sonantic co-founders Zeena Qureshi and John Flynn added in a joint statement: “We believe in the power voice has and its ability to foster a deeper connection with listeners around the world, and we know we can be better than ever on the world’s largest audio platform.”

Spotify said in the purchase announcement that the company has “identified several potential opportunities for text-to-speech capabilities across our platform, and we believe that over the long term, high-quality voice will be important to growing our share of listening.”

Examples, according to Spotify, might include using voice to inform customers of context-based content options without requiring them to look at screens.

Pairing customers with the right content was one of the Spotify strengths company founder and Chief Executive Daniel Ek touted during Investor Day remarks last week (June 8).

After acknowledging the company has faced business challenges of late, Ek said: “So when you ask our listeners what they most admire about Spotify, more than 81% cite our personalization, and this is what we call discoverability. … And they repeatedly tell us that we are a service that ‘just gets them.’ And over time, our ability to find the right content for the right listener has improved significantly.”

See also: Streaming App Provider Ranking Has Two Stars Sharing the Spotlight

In the latest PYMNTS ranking of streaming apps, Spotify moved up a spot, falling behind only Youtube, Netflix and Disney+.

On June 6, PYMNTS reported that Spotify had appointed Maya Prohovnik to a new position overseeing creator and talk content.

See also: Spotify’s New Creator Exec on Mission to Woo Millions of Podcasters