Author: Jay Goldberg
How does a one person radio station add voice variety to their station without having to either rely on other people working for free, then potentially gaining an audience and leaving; or having to pay people which comes with significant added costs and the annoyance of payroll or 1099 forms? With AI, that's how.
I recently added AI voices to my radio station activities. I write the scripts, the AI voices read them. The service I use is Revoicer, but there are plenty of others out there as well. While their premium service is costly, I got their basic service for a one time fee of $67. This was a special so I'm not sure what price you may be able to get this for, but as I wrote there are other services as well. For my uses, their basic service is all I need. Their premium service has more voices, more features, and the ability to incorporate third-party add-ons such AI music and AI video. Their premium service is for people wanting to go into business, whether the voiceover business, business consulting, creating sales or training videos, or creating social media for clients. I just want radio station voices so I'm content with the service I have (if you sign up for them be prepared to get daily emails trying to upsell you to premium and for your dashboard to include voices and features only available in their premium service). I also added, for another $67, the ability to clone 10 voices which allowed me to create an AI version of my voice.
Last month I wrote about my plan to create talking point files for syndication that allow each radio station to add whatever applicable music they want after the talking points, making each show using those talking points unique to each station. Well, I used AI voices for those files. The first 8:54, which is the free file available for other stations (the first show is "Rock Music History for January, 1970"), uses two of Revoicer's voices. I gave each a personality so if people catch on that they are AI voices it would make it more amusing. After the first 8:54 I added a demo for my radio station's version of the show to demonstrate how to incorporate the music from the talking points. I used my cloned voice there. So listen to the show to get a feel for how the AI voices sound. Here is the link. The show is embedded in the page. You can also request a copy of the mp3 file for the talking points on this page to create your station's unique version of "Rock Music History for January, 1970."
If you want to compare my real voice with my cloned voice you can listen to my latest Nomination Show for Rock on Neon Radio's New Wave Song Hall of Fame on this webpage. The show is embedded on that page. There are three talk segments in this show. The first is my real voice. The last is my AI voice going back and forth with another AI voice I used for the show. And since you hung in until now, I'll give you some insight into how to work with, at least, Revoicer's AI voices. First, download Audacity if you don't have an audio editor, it's free and easy to use. Don't use Revoicer's feature to put together your script. The pauses between “people” speaking and within “someone's” speech are too long and not natural sounding. Download each individual talk segment you create and put them together in your audio editor deleting the majority of each pause (visually seen as blank space) between the back and forth talk and within each sentence of “someone's” speech.
In addition, when creating your voice files, know that spaces, commas, semi-colons, exclamation points, etc. give different “instructions” to the AI generator so play with them to get the most realistic sounding voices. Also, you don't have to write each speech correctly from a grammatical perspective; write it so that it sounds correct (e.g. put in a comma where it doesn't belong to get a different reading of what you wrote, that comma could change where the AI places an emphasis in the speech – it may also put in a pause – but you can eliminate that in your audio editor). Also use phonetic spelling (e.g. in excess rather than INXS) and use hyphens when you want the AI generator to read something straightforward rather than interpret the emotion behind the words (e.g. rock-on-neon-radio). I'm sure you'll get tips from whatever service you choose if you decide to go ahead with this.
Now onto the music. While most look at alternative rock starting with new wave and growing from there, old timers like me look at it starting with stations that featured album cuts, like WNEW-FM in New York and WMMR-FM in Philly. Towards that end I am featuring one of the earliest “alternative” bands from the 70s – Renaissance. This band was popular on those two stations despite having just one song that hit the Top 40 chart in the U.S. (there was no Billboard alternative or modern rock chart at that time). And that song was on, officially, their eighth album (although I consider it their sixth album since the band really didn't take shape as the Renaissance people who know them, know, until opera-trained Annie Haslam became their lead singer); and they became popular on those stations starting with their officially fourth (I considerate it their second) album. Annie Haslam, to this day, still has my favorite voice in rock music. In fact, in some early Haslam-Renaissance, she jams to instrumentals with her voice. Below are some of my favorite songs of theirs:
“Carpet of the Sun”
“Can You Understand”
“Mother Russia”
“Black Flame”
“Vultures Fly High”
“Closer Than Yesterday”
“Day of the Dreamer”
“The Angels Cry”
BONUS SONG – from an Annie Haslam solo album; she performs this song with Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues, and the song was written by Hayward.
All "The Music Scout (Alternative)" content rights reside with the author.
Ready to start your own station? Contact one of our Product Consultants or visit our website today. Discover thousands of free stations from every genre of music and talk at Live365.com. Rather listen on our app? Download the Live365 app on iOS or Android. Keep up with the latest news by following us on Facebook (Live365 (Official) and Live365 Broadcasting) and Twitter (@Live365 and @Broadcast365)! You can also shop Live365 swag and branded merchandise at store.live365.com.
Article Image: The text "The Music Scout" with the white Live365 logo underneath, next to an animated person with headphones.
