NRJ Belgium Launches Google Voice App

PARIS — In France, NRJ’s highly recognizable on-air voice Richard Darbois, welcomes users and offers them the opportunity to listen to live broadcasts, one of NRJ’s many web radios or the hottest hits of the moment. And at any time, users can ask their voice assistant for information such as what the current title is.

More than 126 million speakers have been sold worldwide, according to Statista. As for Belgium, it’s estimated that by 2024, almost 50% of the population will have at least one smart speaker in their home. And almost 40% will use these devices to listen to music. As a consequence, NRJ Belgium has decided to offer its listeners a voice application on the Google assistant for all of its stations.

“More than ever, radio is a hybrid medium and must be available everywhere and at all times. Whether that be via a traditional FM receiver, a DAB+ receiver, internet-connected IP radios, TV, smartphones, connected speakers, game consoles or any other connected object that has a speaker or audio output,” said said Kim Beyns, NGroup director.

“As such, we’re pursuing the strategy of ubiquity for all our brands, to be everywhere our listeners are. We developed NRJ Belgium’s voice application in collaboration with Fourcast and with the help and expertise of media agency Wavemaker.”

NRJ Belgium’s voice application is acccessible on every connected device with Google Assistant on smartphones (via the Google Assistant application) and on speakers connected to Google Assistant (Google Home & Home Mini, Bose, Sonos One & Move, Harman Kardon Citation, JBL Link Portable). There are several command phrases users can employ, such as “Hey Google, I want to talk to NRJ Belgium,” “Ok Google, launch an NRJ Hit,” “Ok Google, who sings is this song?”  “Ok Google, please change to another web radio,” etc.

In addition to being available on Google Play and the Apple Store, users can also find the NRJ Belgium app on Microsoft’s Windows Store.