iHeartMedia to Utilize Veritone’s Synthetic Voice Technology to Translate and Produce Podcasts for New Markets

Veritone, Inc. (NASDAQ: VERI), creator of aiWARE, a hyper-expansive enterprise AI platform, and iHeartMedia (NASDAQ: IHRT), the number one podcast publisher globally according to Podtrac, today 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 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 translations 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 acquire the necessary training data to create hyper-realistic custom voice clones. The solution can also secure 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 talents’ 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 their 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.

To learn more about Veritone’s synthetic voice solution, visit https://www.veritone.com/solutions/voice-cloning/ and sign up for a free trial to explore stock voices.