Voice Insider

The #1 Newsletter for Voice AI Professionals

Voice Insider is a subscription newsletter by the creators of Voicebot.ai. It is for anyone that wants to know the story behind the story in the voice and AI industries. Voicebot.ai produces a lot of free content— 60-70 articles each month, original research, a podcast—so most casual observers of the voice ecosystem are well served with our free content. The Voice Insider email newsletter is for people that are on the inside of the industry, need or want an edge from knowing the information that will never appear in Tech Crunch and The Verge. Readers get a competitive advantage around strategy, important unreported news, and data. How you use that edge is up to you.

Stuff You Won’t Find Elsewhere

Each week Voice Insider will arrive directly to your inbox. It will inform you about things that voice industry insiders need to know ahead of their peers, competitors, and customers. The Voicebot editorial team realized that we frequently come across interesting information related to the voice industry that doesn’t quite fit into our standard news coverage or research reports. Voice Insider is a channel for us to tell you about information which is useful to know but you otherwise would have missed. Each week we cover a key insight (Think Tank), reveal and inside fact or idea that you probably don’t know about, present a chart of the week (often of data not published elsewhere), discuss rumors, people moves, upcoming events and more. And there are some other perks from time to time. Plus you get access to the Voicebot’s exclusive Slack channel where you can connect with other industry leaders.

If you are interested, you can subscribe through our Patreon page and become a member for about $2 per issue and you instantly get access to all of the previous issues – about 100 of them with all sorts of useful information available the moment you join. Check some out below. Also, send us your tips about new hires, people moves, little-known-facts or rumors, and more at info(at)voicebot.com.

Check out some of the issues for free:

• View Voice Insider Issue #1 – Alexa Skill Volume, Gaming Reviews and More
• View Voice Insider Issue #2 – Phase 1 of Voice Adoption is Over
• View Voice Insider Issue #22 – The Duopolies Won’t Last. Why Pullsting was a Good Acquisition for Apple (posted before this acquisition was made public)
• View Voice Insider Issue #28– Why Alexa and Google Assistant will Spawn a Thousand Assistants
• View Voice Insider Issue #89 – GPT-3: Amazing Voice Tech or Parlor Trick, Guess Who Has the Most Speech Tech Patents Since 2000
• View Voice Insider Issue #105 – Amazon is Pushing Voice Commerce into 10 Third-Party Skills Next Week

Topics in other issues (subscribers receive immediate access to all previous issues):

• #125 – OpenAI Shuts Down Indie Dev’s GPT-3 Companion. Alexa Skill Game Running Ads
• #124 – Amazon to Add Social Audio but Not for Alexa. Google Eliminates the Wake Word.
• #123 – In-Car Voice Assistant Market Evolves. Baidu Offers Insight into the Value of General Purpose Voice Assistants
• #122 – Has Amazon Abandoned Its Alexa Mobile Strategy? New Data on Voice Assistant Adoption in Cars
• #121 – The Funding Spigit Opens for Voice AI Startups. Google Assistant Increases Ad Rotation. 
• #120 – Boring Voice Technologies Hit the Jackpot. And, the U.S. Trails UK and Germany in One Important Voice Stat.
• #119 – Could a Virtual Human Be the Next Breakthrough Voice Assistant?
• #118 – BBC Beeb No More. Voice Platform Conflicts for Brands. 
• #117 – Alexa Has Subtley But Significantly Changed Behavior. Clubhouse Comes to Android.
• #116 – Will Spotify Shake Up the Voice Assistant Duopoly? Alexa Smart Displays Now Frequently Promote Reorders
• #115 – Why Microsoft Acquired Nuance for $20B. Google Assistant Leadership Shakeup
• #114 – Get Ready for Voice AI Consolidation. New Data on Marketer Sentiment Around Voice Commerce
• #113 – The Killer Feature for Voice Commerce? Changes Are Afoot in the Alexa Skill Store
• #112 – Forecasting Facebook’s Plans in Voice
• #111 – Does Voice Need a Monopoly to Succeed? Another Voice AI Start-up Quietly Raised $4.5 Million
• #110 – Why Voice Platforms Have Plateaued — It’s Not What You Think
• #109 – What is the Biggest Surface Area for Voice? Alexa Custom Assistant Org Structure
• #108 – Is Voice an Embarrassment of Riches or Scarcity? Hearables Sales Explode
• #107 – Alexa Custom Assistants will Expand Custom Assistants for Everyone. Lots of People Moves in Voice
• #106 – 2 Trends and 2 Predictions for Voice in 2021. Samsung Loses Another Viv Exec from Bixby Team
• #105 – Amazon is Pushing Voice Commerce into 10 Third-Party Skills Next Week. What Amazon’s Holiday Press Release Tells Us About Smart Speakers
• #104 – What Happened in Voice AI in 2020 That Really Mattered and Didn’t. What Happens When Tele-Health Visits Explode
• #103 – What the Convergence of Chat and Voice Means. Also, Amazon is Handing Out Top Level Intents for Alexa to Third Parties
• #102 – Hearables, Smart Speakers and the Knock-on Effect. Also, Hearables Still Have More Users Than Smart Speakers
• #101 – Will Voice in Apps be the Catalyst for Voice Assistant Adoption on Smartphones?
• #100 – 99 Problems But Voice Tech Ain’t One. Speech and NLP Patents Leveling Off 
• #99 – Google Duplex Morphs into Enterprise Assistant. Four Futures for Voice Tech
• #98 – Apple is Looking Like the Blackberry of Voice. A Top Voice Game is Getting About 100k Users per Day
• #97 – Google Assistant’s Strategy Shifts to Mobile and the Secret to Google Action Discovery May Be Retention
• #96 – Did Google Just Take a Step Backwards with Nest Audio? Yes, You Can Monetize Ads in Google Actions
• #95 – Alexa Takes a Back Seat to Hardware Palooza at Amazon’s Launch Event. What You Didn’t Hear About Ring’s New Home Security Drone
• #94 – Do “No Code” Voice App Builders Have a Future? True Wireless Earbuds for Just US$30, Amazing!!
• #93 – How the Voice Interoperability Initiative Exposes the Voice Assistant Market Dynamics. Amazon Has New Standards for Kids Skills.
• #92 – Why Amazon Must Acquire TikTok and How Voice Could Play a Role. Clinc Gets a New CEO
• #91 – Will IVR Save the Voice Agency? New Amazon Executive Points to Changing Focus for Alexa Team
• #90 – Zoom Will Launch on Amazon, Google, Facebook Smart Displays. Does it Matter? Brands Inch Up Their Commitment to Voice While Others Abandon
• #89 – GPT-3: Amazing Voice Tech or Parlor Trick. Guess Who Has the Most Speech Technology Patents Since 2000
• #88 – Why Bixby Isn’t Likely to Go Away. Salesforce Hasn’t Abandoned Voice, Just Einstein
• #87 – Alexa Changed a Lot This Week but Almost Nobody Noticed. Looks Like VaynerSmart Closed Its Doors
• #86 – Voice Assistants Don’t Need Human Level Conversation to be Useful. Dashbot Loses Its Last Co-founder
• #85 – Convergence Between Voice and Visual is Here. Use of Third-party Voice Apps Doubles During COVID Quarantines
• #84 – Custom Voice Assistants Break Out. Apple Has 1,000 People Working on Siri Projects
• #83 – More Thoughts on Making Money in Voice – The Platform Perspective. BBC Metrics on Voice Assistant Users
• #82 – The Audio Explosion from Joe Rogan to Clubhouse and the Impact on Voice. Is Alexa Now Requesting Reviews of Products from Amazon.com Purchases?
• #81 – Where’s the Money in Voice? 95% of Siri’s Vocabulary is Dedicated to This One Domain
• #80 – The Data Say Third-Party Voice App Devs Should Be Advertising Now. Sensory Has a New Self-Service Custom Wake Word and Vocabulary Dev Tool
• #79 – Listen Learner, Apple and Smart Speaker Privacy. Plus, Sharp Rise in Voice App Usage Under Quarantine
• #78 – When it Comes to Voice Today, Simple is Still Better. Recipe Use Way Up During Social Distancing
• #77 – Will Coronavirus Lead to a Conversational Convergence? Pre-COVID Shakeups in the Voice Industry
• #76 – The Audioweb (Not Voice Web) is Finally Here. Cortana is Gone From Mobile. Will the Name Disappear Too?
• #75 – Voice Ecosystems Look More Like Social Media Than Mobile. What3Words Bags Big Names in Unannounced Funding Round
• #74 – Ad Campaigns Through Voice Assistants are a Good Thing and Amazon Using NLG in Alexa Conversations
• #73 – Google’s Meena and Whether Humanlike Conversation Skills Really Matters. Novel Effect Looking for $10 Million Round
• #72 – Voice-First Education Apps Will Succeed Because Media Works on Voice. Google Assistant Implicit Innovations In Hibernation. Voice Insider
• #71 – The Key Thing I Learned at Project Voice. Also, is Amazon Planning for an Alexa-Focused Kickstarter Service?
• #70 – The Two Biggest Voice Takeaways from CES 2020
• #69 – Will Voice Apps Disappear in 2019? Bespoken Lands New Funding in 2019
• #68 – Did Voice Assistant Momentum Stall in 2019? There Were No Leaps Forward. Samsung Artificial Human NEON Might be Big Story at CES 2020
• #67 – Voice Enabling Mobile Apps to Accelerate in 2020. This is Good for Siri
• #66 – Let’s Talk About the Edge and the Cloud. The Implications of Consumer Media Saturation
• #65 – Get Ready for More Acquisitions to Shore Up Voice Strategy Gaps. Who is the Most Valuable Voice “Startup”?
• #60 – The Great Google Action Disappearance and the Impact on Enterprise Support for Voice, Plus Some New Nomenclature
• #59 – Welcome to the Ebb Tide for Voice Assistant Apps. This Bank Has as Many as 1 Million Monthly Users for its App-Based Voice Assistant.
• #58 – The Ear Wars Heat Up. Rationale Behind the Beeb. Alexa Skill Growth Continues its Slide.
• #57 – Alexa’s On-the-Go Strategy Finally Takes Shape, Amazon Says it Doesn’t Need to Make Money on it Products
• #56 – Facebook’s Voice and Wearables Strategy to Directly Connect with Consumers, 3 Smart Speakers with Dual Assistants Have One Thing in Common
• #55 – Alexa Goes to the Edge, Hearables Rise, and Aiva is Raising $4 Million
• #54 – Baidu Shows How Apple (or others) Can Rise in the Voice Assistant Wars. Some Google Assistant Actions Will Die Next Month
• #53  – Are Voice Assistants the New Apps? BBC and Ikea Think So. Alexa Skill Rewards About to Change
• #52 – One Year of Voice Insider Reviewed. Spoken Layer Closes $3 Million in Funding and Triples Valuation
• #51 – Podcasts and Voice Assistants – Do They Intersect? What to Expect from Google Assistant’s Forthcoming Podcast Search.
• #50 – The Biggest Threat to Voice Assistant Growth is Not Consumer Backlash; It’s This.
• #49 – Voice App Discovery – no one is coming to rescue you. Android Auto is becoming Google Assistant. What that means.
• #48 – Four Types of Voice Assistant Strategies. Amazon Skill Flow Builder, the Inside Story.
• #47 – A Trillion Dollar Voice Economy, A Peace Dividend or Both from the Voice Platform Wars? Voicebot at Voice Summit 19
• #46 – Top Story in Voice for the First Half of 2019. Is Voice headed for the Trough? There Will Be No Advertising on Bixby.
• #45 – Is voice an Interface or a Platform? Yes. It Is. And, How Much Voice is Worth on the Web.
• #44 – The Alexa Issue. Alexa to Introduce a Declarative Programming Model (like Bixby?) But Imperative Still Rules Today. New Alexa Skill Launches Drop Over 50% in 2019
• #43 – The Privacy Issue. Amazon, Apple, and Google All Promote Privacy as a Voice Assistant Feature. Former Siri Head Says Assistants Just Aren’t That Smart. Does Siri have an imagination deficit?
• #42 – The Apple Issue. What WWDC Means for Voice at Apple. How the Knowledge Navigator of 1987 Shows Just How Far Short Apple Has Progressed Toward Its Own Vision
• #41 – The Onslaught of Voice Industry Data. What is to be believed? Google Project Pygmalion Has a Lot of Linguist Contractors Annotating Speech.
• #40 – Is Google Duplex Just Another Mechanical Turk? Bixby Wants to Give Voice Devs Free Stuff, Even TVs
• #39 – The Coming Android App / Google Action Showdown, Amazon Wanted Google Assistant to Run Alongside Alexa on Sonos
• #38 – Google Assistant Can Run on Device – that means some things may change, but not soon, Implicit Invocation Referrals Down a Lot
• #37 – Mark Cuban Duels with John Legend. Is Cortana about to Integrate with Google Assistant?
• #36 – Why Siri May Have More Apps with Voice Than Alexa This Time Next Year, VoiceFlow’s New Lead VC Likely Lost Money on PullString
• #35 – Is Voice a Good Bet for Startups? The Alexa Auto Strategy Explained
• #34 – The Rise of the Arbitrators for In-Car Voice Assistants, Erica Costs Higher Than Previously Thought
• #33 – Are Voice Assistants with Eyes Coming? Data on Smart Speaker Brand Choice by Household Income
• #32 – Voice Assistants Are Not Conversational, Google Home Users Conduct More Voice Searches
• #31 – Advertising Through Voice Assistants vs. Driving Voice App Discovery, A Tip on Sharing Google Actions
• #30 – Dialogflow Down for 5 Hours and Cripples Many Google Actions; Voice Marketing Budgets Don’t Match Adoption
• #29 – Smart Speaker Killer Apps Are Here Today while Third-Party Apps Languish. This Can and Will Be Fixed
• #28 – Why Alexa and Google Assistant Will Spawn Thousands of Assistants
• #27 – How Should We Count Voice Assistants? Smart Display Adoption Rises More Than 500% in the U.S. in 2018
• #26 – Voice Assistants Are Officially Pervasive. Now What? Google Actions Grow 2.5X in 2018, but trail Alexa Skills by a Whole Lot. Does it matter?
• #25 – The GOWN Voice Assistant Classification Framework Debut, Why Sonos is Struggling Getting Google Assistant onboard
• #24 – Investors Finally Moving Into Voice? Conversation.one Loses Both Founders, Changes Name, and Appears to be Rethinking Its Future
• #23 – Microsoft Cortana to Focus on Enterprise, Plans to Support Google Assistant and Alexa, Voiceflow Gets Investment from Weekend Fund
• #22 – The Duopolies Won’t Last, Why PullString was a Good Acquisition Target for Apple, and Alexa Conference Recap
• #21 – CES 2019 Day 3 Bonus Edition — 1,000 Points of Light on the Voice Landscape and the Emerging Consensus
• #20 – CES Updates from the Media Days and Voice Assistants at a Billion Devices for Just One Player – the battle for distribution
• #19 – Voice Will be Bigger at CES in 2019 But the Headlines Will Be Forgettable as 2019 is About Practical Applications
• #18 – Why smart speakers in Italy and Spain were more important than Google Duplex in 2018
• #17 – Alexa gets another smart speaker partner, the impact on Google, Echo Show coming to India
• #16 – Are voice assistants a new browser or OS?
• #15 – Smart display sales languish, voice ratings take off
• #14 – Should Smart Speakers Be Free? How to Get 6k Alexa skill users per day…
• #13 – Voice assistants and the rising duopoly, something peculiar about Google Home Hub
• #12 – Voice assistants beyond the smart speaker, where else are they being used (exclusive early access to data)
• #11 – Will there be one voice assistant or many, Alexa skill growth rate accelerates (exclusive data)
• #10 – Updates on Viv in Bixby 2.0 and new U.S. smart speaker adoption numbers
• #9 – Dynamic context explained through Alexa whisper mode and new patent, also exclusive data on smart speaker frequency of use
• #8 – Voice apps as services, Google’s real-time translation services and exclusive data about hearables usage
• #7 – Google Home Hub and Duplex roll out; how to position products for sale through Alexa
• #6 – Advertisers warm up to voice assistants, Target could be an acquisition target for a voice tech giant
• #5 – Alexa unleashed, skill counts by country, global smart speaker shipments by device
• #4 – Apple Focuses on the Person, Amazon the Place, Google Everywhere; and what do 1P, 2P and 3P mean?
• #3 – Not everyone is all-in on voice, American average time spent with media chart and implication for voice
• #2 – Phase One of Voice Adoption is Over, Amazon’s Voice Content Grab and More
• #1 – Alexa Skill Volume, Gaming Reviews on Google Assistant and More