Voice Tracking for New Media Podcast Season 1 voice tracking Music Radio Creative

What Is Voice Tracking?

Voice tracking is a method from the traditional days of radio broadcasting. It is simply pre-recording shows for the radio station. However instead of pre-recording the whole show like a 54 minutes session, voice tracking is just the recording of the presenter which in turn will be played and linked to music and advertisements by a computer using radio automation software. To make it simpler, it’s tracking your voice into an hour of radio and it’s the bits that go in an hour from the radio host or presenter. Not everyone is aware but many music radio stations use voice tracking. The key to a good voice track is for a presenter to make it sound natural and as if it was a live broadcast.

Reasons For Using Voice Tracking

Plenty of music radio stations uses voice tracking due to the fact that it is efficient, saves the radio station money and let’s you fill in the slots where you don’t have a presenter such as the overnight show. Back in 2009, I did some voice tracking for Capital Life (the national UK DAB station owned by Capital Radio which is now Global Radio) when they were just starting to delve in digital radio and the pay was reasonable but much lower than what you get as a regular live presenter. The best thing about it was that I could work flexible hours. There were times I only needed to go to the station once a week to pre-record 5 shows.

Potential Voice Tracks For Free

Izabela believes that podcasting can potentially open doors for broadcasters to have voice tracks for free which will contain great content rather than just prerecording the usual lines. On the other hand I feel this concept wouldn’t work well as podcasters are more focused on a niche and wouldn’t be good or appropriate to most of the radio stations like hit music radio. However, Izabela argues that there still will be radio shows that are targeted for specific demographics and could be aligned to whatever niche the targeted group could potentially enjoy listening to.

Mike Yunis
Mike Yunis from the VR2 Show

I thought of our friend Mike Yunis from the VR2 Show. Currently, Mike is building an online station playing Classic rock from 1965 to 1985 and his idea was to play music and put relevant radio content targeted to the listeners. An example of this is his Tech Tip Tuesday show which is like a 5 minute pre-record. Izabela mentions that the key is to know your listener and really thoroughly research your market. Once that is done, she believes that you can find relevant content from podcasters that would be more than willing to record something for you as it would be additional exposure for them.

New Media and Traditional Media

If podcasters want to make their content available for radio stations, they could record their session in bits of chunks to allow the radio station to play music or insert advertisements in between. It is also necessary for the radio stations to respect the recorded content and not to edit the podcast’s branding or any sponsors. There maybe a potential branding issue but if you’re a radio station and you want to work with a certain podcaster then you can make a deal with them to make sure that you agree on the same terms.

Can You Get Voice Tracking Radio Jobs?

The paid voice tracking jobs are far and few between, especially in the online radio world, but it is possible to make a living from voice tracking. If you have enough  commercial radio stations that are happy to pay for your talent services you can do well. It doesn’t matter if the radio station is in Dubai, Spain or the Isle of Wight as long as you have a microphone and fast internet connection you can produce voice tracks for radio stations from your own home studio.

You can get your break by doing some free voice tracking for internet radio stations.

Your Thoughts On Voice Tracking?

If you’re a podcaster, are you already doing voice tracking or have you thought of it? For radio stations, what are you looking for from potential podcasters or content creators as hosts for your radio station? We’d love to hear what you think.

Thank You For Your iTunes Podcast Reviews!

If you are a regular listener and you listen to our podcast weekly because you think we are doing something right. Please go to iTunes and let us know why you tune in every week, what makes you come back and what things we should improve on?

Here Are Some Of Our Recent Reviews

MoneyPlan SOS of the United States says:

6 stars – The show used to be good when it was just Mike Russell bring on Izabela and the show is great!

Ken Burgin in Australia mentions:

Good fun and great information. The liveliness of good radio show and chunk full of very useful information of podcast, voice overs, audio and radio production, and marketing.

Phil Olsen from Great Britain and Virtual Pizza has rated us 5 stars and says:

Mike and Izabela present this podcast with interesting topics, great interviews, and a really fresh style.

scrappydCote from the USA says:

MRC waves ripples with fun tips and tones, entertaining, friendly and casual notes with a punch of informative tips and stories from Mike and Izabela.

Thank You For Listening

Here’s a great statistic from MRC. We’re just nearing the 100th podcast episode and as of this recording we already have 103,444 podcast downloads in total. Thank you for listening!

If you haven’t done so already please consider leaving an honest review of the podcast on iTunes.

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3 Responses

  1. Hi Mike, I think what you have to say is fantastic. As a VO myself, you seem to have run the track that most of us are on. The quality of this particular podcast is fascinating. Can you tell us your set up and if you’ve applied any effects on the production? BTW, I have a shortcut on my AA CS6 named “Mikes Try” that I run on all my auditions before sending them off! I got it from one of your web tutorials, but unfortunatley had to skip a part because I couldn’t get the setting to match one of your steps! Thanks a million for your outstanding contribution to this lovely world of audio! Best, Ramesh

  2. I am a regular fan of the podcast and I really enjoy the banter between i Izabella and Mike.

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