Image Credit: Sonantic

Spotify is buying Sonantic, a London-based AI voice platform.

Founders Zeena Qureshi and John Flynn launched Sonantic in December 2018. The pair both have professional backgrounds in speech and language therapy for Hollywood sound production. On the Sonantic site, the company claims its “technology is poised to revolutionize game and film production” reports MBW.

Furthermore, the company claims to be able to create “compelling, nuanced, and stunningly realistic voices from text”.

Who are Sonantic?

In a blog post, co-founder and Sonantic CEO Zeena Qureshi said that a number of uses within the voice market include “advertising and call centres to robots and audiobooks”. In the same blog post, Qureshi talks about how Sonantic’s work is split into two parts.

First, they create “high quality voice technology for studios”. For anyone that works in dialogue recording and editing roles, you’ll know that it takes time to record. Add to that the logistics of getting voice actors into the studio and you’ve got a lot to think about. Well, Sonantic aim to “[spare] creators the time and logistics involved in traditional voice recording, while also transforming their scripts into immersive story voices in real time

As for the second part of the company’s work, they work with professional actors to “create models of their voice”.

Spotify acquires Sonantic

The Sonantic co-founders Zeena Qureshi and John Flynn said in a joint statement: “We’re looking forward to joining Spotify and continuing to build exciting voice experiences.

“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.”

The news of Spotify acquiring Sonantic is in line with last week’s Spotify Investor Day. CEO Daniel Ek outlined his company’s intentions to enter the audiobook market. Moreover, Spotify announced in November that an agreement to acquire audiobook distribution company Findaway was in reach.

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. This integration will enable us to engage users in a new and even more personalized way.

Ziad Sultan, Spotify’s Vice President of Personalization