Nuance and Gracenote Partner for Voice-Enabled Music and Video Experiences

Nuance Communications and Gracenote have forged a 10-year strategic partnership to accelerate voice innovations and next-generation solutions for interactive music and video experiences on phones, tablets, in cars, on smart TVs, and in the cloud, all across a broad range of content providers.

Nuance's voice and natural language understanding technologies will leverage Gracenote's MediaVOCS database of phonetic transcriptions of artist names, albums, and music genres, as well as movie and TV metadata. The first solution with the combined technologies will be made available via Nuance later this year as VoCon Music Premium. VoCon Music Premium will deliver a voice experience where consumers can speak the name of almost any artist, song, or album, and instantly get results, even for the most difficult artist names for systems to recognize, such as Ke$ha, AC/DC and 311.

"Never before has there been a greater consumer demand for constant and unlimited access to content, be it music, videos, or Web content. But that unlimited access must be fast, easy, and simple," said Michael Thompson, senior vice president and general manager of Nuance Mobile, in a statement. "By combining our voice and natural language understanding innovations with Gracenote's leading phonetic data and metadata, Nuance will bring to market an entirely new media-specific platform for cars, phones, TVs, and mobile apps, giving consumers an amazing media experience anywhere they access content."

Nuance and Gracenote will also focus their partnership on developing compelling next-generation media experiences that take advantage of the vast media resources and content available to consumers, specifically content in the cloud. Nuance and Gracenote will collaborate to bring voice technologies to market that drive effortless media discovery and navigation of media libraries containing millions of songs, movies, shows, and artist and actor content.

"Gracenote's passion is enhancing how people enjoy their favorite music, movies, and TV programs, and by expanding our relationship with Nuance, we're working together to develop the ultimate speech-powered solutions that will enable unlimited and intuitive access to all the media content the world has to offer," said Stephen White, president of Gracenote, in a statement.