Spotify Acquires Sonantic

Music and audio streaming service provider Spotify is buying London-based Sonantic, providers of an artificial-intelligence-powered voice platform for creating voices from text. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Spotify officials said in a statement that the company is looking at ways to incorporate text-to-speech capabilities across its platform and believes that over the long term, high-quality voice will be important to growing its share of listening. Voice technology, they said further, could allow Spotify to give context to users about upcoming recommendations when they aren't looking at their screens. Using voice in these moments can reduce barriers to creating new audio experiencesand open up the doors to even more new opportunities.

"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," said Ziad Sultan, Spotify's vice president of personalization, in a statement. "This integration will enable us to engage users in a new and even more personalized way."

"We're looking forward to joining Spotify and continuing to build exciting voice experiences," said Sonantic co-founders 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."