Sonos has filed an IPO. According to the paperwork, the wireless speaker company is looking to raise up to $100 million with the public offering. It said that as of March 31, it has sold 19 million products to 6.9 million households. Continue Reading
So far, voice assistants are commonly used to access audio entertainment, but as the technology advances, the next step could involve commerce and shopping. Voicebot and Voysis have collaborated on a report pointing to the future of voice shopping. The analysis predicts that, due to the high rates of ownership (79.8%), many people will first be introduced to voice assistant shopping on smartphones. Continue Reading
Sonos has taken its ambitious next step into the smart speaker space with a new product that supports multiple voice assistants and changes the form factor. The Sonos Beam is a sound bar, a much larger device than the most popular tabletop smart speaker designs currently on the market, that’s capable of providing quality audio for a range of entertainment purposes in small- or medium-sized rooms. Continue Reading
Today, several Google executives shared the latest updates for the tech company in the keynote for Google I/O. The developer-focused event shared some of the upcoming changes for the Google Assistant voice AI platform that will help the company bring the service to more countries and offer more functions. Continue Reading
Spotify recently made waves in the financial sector with its unique direct listing, but the company’s next move is expected to be firmly back in the tech space. Spotify is hosting an event on April 24 to share its latest development. According to the early reports and speculation, that development may be a piece of dedicated hardware for streaming Spotify via voice control in a car. Continue Reading
Amazon Alexa is getting more options for actions that can be incorporated into the voice AI’s routines. This feature lets users assemble a set of actions from the smart speaker triggered by a single voice command. Initially limited to news, weather, traffic, and smart home skills, routines can now incorporate music, podcast, and radio content. Continue Reading
Things are looking good for Amazon’s musical efforts these days. Amazon is amassing a growing music audience that now numbers “tens of millions” of paying customers, while its Amazon Music Unlimited program has more than doubled its subscriber count in the past six months. The success of smart speakers and a growing number of Prime membership subscribers have been the main factors in Amazon’s music audience expansion, according to a top exec. Continue Reading
TuneIn announced a new subscription offering specifically for accessing its audio content on Amazon Alexa. TuneIn Live offers access to premium live audio from the company, including news stations, talk shows, and professional sporting events, on smart speakers. Continue Reading
Nearly 20% of U.S. adults now own a smart speaker, according to a survey spearheaded by Voicebot, in collaboration with PullString and RAIN Agency (not the same as RAIN News). Extrapolated, the results from its survey of more than 1,000 adults indicate that about 47.3 million people own the devices. Nearly two-thirds of all households said they own just one smart speaker. Continue Reading
It was only a matter of time before two of the biggest trends in the tech world crossed paths. There’s a new skill for Amazon Alexa called DeepMusic that plays songs composed by artificial intelligence over a smart speaker. Click to listen. Continue Reading
Voxmatic is looking to put voice commands into the hands of podcasters large and small. The business has launched a free platform for the creation personal skills on the Amazon Alexa platform for podcasters. Its starter kit offers individual skill/flash briefing publishing. It plans to add a professional package later this year. Continue Reading
The Infinite Dial kicked off with a look at ownership trends in technology and media. Most telling, the research from Edison and Triton focused on the growth in smart speakers. Awareness of the device segment was 71% for Amazon Alexa, up from 57% last year, while Google Home awareness rose from 45% in 2017 to 56% in 2018. Considering the recent ad blitzes for the segment, John Rosso joked that those who haven’t heard of them are “probably living in caves and staring at their tablets.” Continue Reading