Our partner Pandora, the largest streaming music provider in the U.S., has just introduced Voice Mode, a new, native smart assistant that allows listeners to control Pandora’s mobile app. With Voice Mode, users can discover new music using simple voice commands, providing an intuitive, hands-free experience that’s tailored for the unique tastes of each user. Starting today, Pandora will roll out access to Voice Mode to select listeners on iOS and Android, with general availability for all mobile users coming soon.

Powered by our Houndify Voice AI platform, Voice Mode features the customized wake-phrase “Hey, Pandora…,” which allows users to effortlessly control and continually refine their listening experience just by speaking naturally.

Voice Mode combines the Houndify platform’s advanced Natural Language Understanding technology with Pandora’s personalized machine learning search algorithms to respond to a wide array of requests.

Types of voice requests include:

• Control requests to change station, control volume, skip or pause music, and other basic navigation commands.
• Thematic requests to deliver personalized music based on each user’s unique tastes, moods, and favorite activities like “play something for my workout” or “play music for relaxing.”
• Open-ended requests like “play something different”, “play something I like”, or “play more like this.”
• Basic requests for a specific artist, song, station, podcast, or playlist like “play new music by…” or “play my happy jams playlist.”
• Interactive requests like “what song is this?” or directional requests like “add this song to my party playlist” or “I like this” to give a thumbs-up.

Pandora’s uniquely predictive understanding of individual listener preferences is powered by its Music Genome Project — the richest dataset of music-listening information in the world.

Through the Houndify integration, in addition to the custom wake phrase “Hey, Pandora…,” we have also collaborated on an exclusive and customized branded voice, designed to represent the Pandora experience and demographic. This technology enables Pandora to offer the fastest, easiest, and most accurate way to play music in any voice-enabled streaming service.

Read about How Pandora Used Voice AI to Create a Frictionless Music Experience.

Developers interested in exploring the Houndify platform can visit Houndify.com to learn more and register.  The Pandora mobile app can be downloaded from Pandora.com, as well as on Apple App Store and Google Play Store.