Spotify has been busy with multiple acquisitions in recent months. In February, the company bought the podcast tech companies Chartable and Podsights. Spotify has previously detailed its plans to become the leader of the podcast and audiobook market. Now, they are investing in text-to-speech startups with Sonantic. Sonantic is an AI startup that focuses on delivering “stunningly realistic” voices from texts. Zeena Qureshi and John Flynn found it, and they both now join Spotify to continue working on their service. “We’re looking forward to joining Spotify and continuing to build exciting voice experiences,” said Zeena Qureshi and John Flynn 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 has recently brought a TikTok-style music discovery feed, and the Sonantic voice technology can better help users find their favorite songs and audios through voice commands.
Sonantic brings text-to-speech capabilities to Spotify platform
Spotify still hasn’t detailed its incentives for buying a text-to-speech startup. But the company says they’ve identified opportunities for text-to-speech capabilities in the platform. For example, Spotify believes it can use the Sonantic technology to give context to users about upcoming recommendations when they aren’t looking at their screens. Moreover, using this voice technology can reduce barriers and open the doors to creating new audio experiences and opportunities, Spotify said. It’s still unclear how much Spotify paid to acquire Sonantic and when the deal closes. But Sonantic could help Spotify to bring an alternative to the conventional visual interface and let users navigate with their voices instead of fingers. “We believe that Sonantic’s technology will allow us to create high-quality experiences for our users by building on our existing technical capabilities.” Spotify noted.
