A music experiment
On 1 October 2026, Yandex introduced Sona, a generative model for music recommendations. The company tested it on Alice smart speakers. According to Yandex, recommendation listening time in the test group increased by 6.3% during the week.
Selection and ranking together
In the conventional system described by Yandex, several algorithms first collect suitable tracks and then choose the best candidates. Sona combines selection and ranking in one model and takes listeners’ actions into account. Developers can tune the recommendation sequence as a whole.
What was measured
The published result concerns listening time during a one-week speaker experiment. It describes the test group’s behaviour under those conditions. Long-term changes in musical preferences and results on other devices are outside the scope of that measure.
