Pandora App Gets New Voice-Enabled Smart Assistant

Pandora has announced Voice Mode, a new smart assistant that allows users to control the Pandora app using simple voice commands. The new feature is rolling out to select users starting today on iOS and Android.

Voice Mode allows listeners to seamlessly enjoy the full range of their Pandora experience hands-free whether they’re driving, cooking, working out, or entertaining friends.

“Pandora is the leader in personalized audio entertainment, and millions of our listeners are already loving the experience we’ve created on smart speakers and other voice-enabled connected devices,” said Chris Phillips, Chief Product Officer, Pandora. “With Voice Mode, we are introducing an even more natural and conversational way for listeners to discover new music and enhance their experience directly in the Pandora mobile app, like getting recommendations from a friend who really knows you.”


To use the Pandora assistant, users will need to say 'Hey Pandora' followed by a request.

Types of requests include:
● Control requests to change stations, control volume, skip or pause music, and other basic navigation commands.
● Thematic requests delivering 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.

To power Voice Mode, Pandora is using SoundHound's Houndify platform which combines both Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Natural Language Understanding (NLU) into one engine.

You can download Pandora from the App Store for free.


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