Veritone, Inc., creator of aiWARE, a hyper-expansive enterprise AI platform, and iHeartMedia, the number one podcast publisher globally according to Podtrac, announced iHeartMedia’s planned use of Veritone’s synthetic voice solution that allows celebrities, athletes, influencers, broadcasters, podcasters and other talent across numerous industries to securely create and monetize verified synthetic voices that can be transformed into different languages, dialects, accents and more.

iHeartMedia will leverage Veritone’s AI platform to make more shows across the iHeartPodcast Network available in multiple languages, helping to make more shows across the iHeartPodcast Network available in multiple languages, helping to expand their podcast market. The first use case is to translate iHeart’s marquee podcasts for Spanish-speaking audiences.

“We have worked with the iHeartMedia team for more than four years in various aspects of their business, and we are very excited to collaborate on expanding their podcast audience and unlocking new revenue streams for the broadcast industry leader,” said Ryan Steelberg, president of Veritone. “iHeartMedia has always been a pioneer of innovation, and now with the power of Veritone’s synthetic voice solution, iHeartMedia will not only be able to scale to new markets with localized language transactions but retain the brand value of their top talent’s voice – which is fundamental in podcasting. We are also partnering to develop synthetic voices for advertising and engaging content while reducing time-to-market and production costs for radio, podcasting and the metaverse.”

In addition to a self-serve application for voice projects leveraging stock voices, Veritone’s synthetic voice solution offers custom synthetic voice cloning that takes a professional approach and works with clients to the approvals necessary to create the cloned voice as well as approvals required to use the voice appropriately. Additionally, this new technology will offer increased revenue streams for the branded synthetic voice.

“With the hyper-growth of our podcast network over the past decade, we are always looking for what is new and next in the medium, too – and Veritone’s synthetic voice solution is a great example of that,” said Conal Byrne, chief executive officer at iHeartMedia Digital Audio Group. “Being able to easily offer our podcasts in other languages, in the talent’s unique style, will be an awesome and innovative way to grow market share in the global marketplace.”

Veritone’s synthetic voice solution allows iHeartMedia the opportunity to reach new audiences at scale with the current top podcast talent. With no additional studio time, voice talent can authorize Veritone’s synthetic voice solution to automatically produce more podcasts, advertisements, and additional audio in multiple languages with the same energy, cadence and uniqueness of top talent.

iHeartMedia, the largest audio media company in the U.S. and the top podcast publisher globally according to Podtrac, announced a partnership with Sounder, an audio intelligent platform that builds foundational podcasting technology to drive monetization, brand safety and discoverability for audio content.

iHeartMedia will leverage Sounder’s Audio Data Cloud to provide both established and emerging podcast creators the best AI and Machine Learning (ML) tools to help them gain critical, real-time insights to accelerate growth and improve monetization. With more than 750 iHeartRadio Original podcasts — including some of the biggest podcasts and creators in the world – now using this technology, these new capabilities will rapidly become the industry standard.

iHeartMedia will leverage Sounder’s Audio Data Cloud’s automated best-in-class AI and ML brand safety solution to ensure advertisers can confidently invest in the iHeartPodcast Network’s expansive and rapidly growing line-up of diverse content with more than 392 million downloads and streams a month (more downloads than the next three podcast publishers combined).

The brand safety solution enables iHeartMedia’s marketing partners to buy across a wide array of creators with the assurance that the content adheres to industry safety standards. The technology will quickly expand to also allow advertisers to customize their brand safety guidelines, unlocking new and more diverse publishers to provide even more effective ad placements.

Sounder’s Audio Data Cloud enables large publishers the ability to perform brand suitability analysis, topic analysis, content summarization, and dynamic segmentation. These solutions help accelerate the size and engagement of the iHeartPodcast Network’s large and growing audience from the biggest and most diverse shows in the network, to the rapidly growing number of up-and-coming creators. Audio Data Cloud leverages Sounder’s proprietary automated speech recognition technology and powerful AI/ML models. In doing so, it unlocks uncultured value for all enterprise audio content.

In addition to this commercial partnership, iHeartMedia has also announced a strategic investment in Sounder, as lead investor in the company’s Series A round.

The podcast producers, editors, researchers, writers, and hosts of iHeartMedia announced that they are unionizing with the Writer’s Guild of America, East. It is a labor union of over 6,000 creative professionals in broadcast news, scripted television and motion pictures, and digital media.

The iHeart Podcast Union provided information about why they want to form a union.

“…However, during difficult times, we are reminded that while the iHeart Digital Audio Group prides itself on its relative autonomy and ability to adapt to the shifting needs of the marketplace – much like a start-up – we work under the capacity constraints of a legacy broadcast conglomerate. Essentially, we have been encouraged to embrace the dynamism of start-up culture without any of the associated benefits.

Throughout the unprecedented challenges of the last two years, we managed to seamlessly transition to remote work; our adaptability helped the company not just sustain, but thrive during a period of economic uncertainty and social unrest. During team calls, town halls, and official email communications from leadership, we are frequently reminded of the financial gains that we helped make possible. Bob Pittman, CEO and Chairman of iHeartMedia, reported during last month’s quarterly earnings call that Digital Audio revenue increased by 77 percent compared to 2020. Our division’s significant growth was “driven primarily by continuing increases in demand for digital advertising and the continued growth of podcasting,” where revenue is up 184 percent compared to 2020.

Unfortunately, those gains have not reached the creators working round-the-clock to keep our audience of more than 30 million monthly listeners actively engaged. With hundreds of shows across all categories and genres, many of us are doing the work of multiple employees, and the huge volume of content we are responsible for is not met with equitable compensation. Furthermore, we lack transparency in workplace decision making, meaningful initiatives toward diversity and inclusion, fairness in managerial relationships, and clarity in divisions of labor. While we are proud to be an essential part of iHeartMedia’s success over the past few years, we are keenly aware of significant internal pay disparities between similarly positioned individuals within the company. And across the board, iHeartMedia’s overall compensation and benefits standards are wholly insufficient when compared to the greater podcast and scripted audio market…”

They are asking for the following:

• Appropriate compensation and benefits
• Accountability mechanisms regarding diversity and inclusion efforts
• Manageable workloads and appropriate staffing for shows
• Clear plans for advancement and standardized job descriptions
• Job security