Speak to Melody
Voice searches are fast becoming the norm for getting the things we want. Over 50% of teens and 41% of adults us use voice searches or requests daily. All signs point to more searches, from more sources, with greater customization. Siri, Alexa, Cortana and now Melody, (the new voice assistant from Speak Music) are in our lives listening and ready to help.
On this episode of Popping the Bubbl we sit with and talk to Speak Music CEO, Mark Anderson. Speak Music’s product “Melody” provides voice activated access to 1000s of music, news and podcast sources. Melody is found in devices like iHome units that are sold at retailers such as Wal-Mart, Bed Bath & Beyond and Costco.
By leveraging the mountain of playlists on services like Spotify, and the thousands of station options on iHeart Radio, Melody gets to the tunes you want to hear. Melody also pays attention to your patterns on social media, she’s mindful of your workout schedule and other events where you’re likely to want music; but not just random tunes, but the actual songs you want to hear. On the horizon Melody will gather bio sensing data that further works to hone how it chooses bands/songs.
The Melody concept was created by Mark Anderson and his co-founders Dean Summers and Zak Mandhro. Each of them, wanted to improve the music listening experience for people on the move.
Proactive customization-Once you sign in to a listening service like Spotify or iHeart Radio…Melody can already pick music based upon our habits. As Melody’s learning engine gets smarter, it’ll start to predict what you already want to hear.
Melody is powerful, she creates stations for you based on genre, pulls from iHeart Radio’s thousands of stations and creates a customization level that surpasses all other services.
Melody also learns to play music to suit your moods. Mark wanted to hear W Hotel music…and Melody found the W’s list and started playing the music. Not just the W’s list, but thousands of curated lists from people that want the same type of music as you.
What about podcasts? Yes, Mark noted that they’ve just added the ability to search for podcasts. Melody also does news-and there are some neat customization elements that Melody will offer. They want to give you news and topics that resonate with you, but also mine stories from the past.
The thing I found great about Melody is the customization. It’s one thing to play U2, yes I love the band, but it’s another to play the songs I want to hear…and save the other bands for another time. We’re getting to a point where curating music is better, more personalized and mobile than ever.
The day we interviewed Mark, he was presenting at SF New Tech. We asked him to give us a quick demo. Mark said, “Play Depeche Mode” seconds later Sandra had a big smile on her face, (inside scoop: Sandra has a primordial passion for Depeche Mode)
Melody is showing us what it’s like inside the emerging voice driven assistant world. She’s keeping our feet tapping, our hearts full of joy and our pump strong in the gym…all while keeping us hands free and active. Thanks Mark for getting us the tunes we need.
