Suzanne Kirkland is the Head of Sales and Business Development for AudioShake. AudioShake was one of three winners of the 2024 PILOT Innovation Challenge. Hear from AudioShake at NAB Show on Monday, April 15 at 10 a.m. PT

Audio can be a challenging format to work with, in part because it’s difficult to get at the different components or layers of audio, called “stems.”

Stems are like layers in a Photoshop or Premiere project. They make it possible to edit, reutilize and maximize audio for untapped creative and revenue opportunities. While big-budget productions are often multi-tracked, the vast majority of the world’s audio, from UGC through to broadcast, suffers from an inability to edit the different stems from a track.

That’s where AudioShake comes in. Our patented, award-winning technology can split a full audio recording into its parts, from splitting the instrument stems in a song or removing music from a piece of content, through to isolating M&E or cleaning speech before it goes through ASR transcription.

Partners across streaming, film, TV and post-production have all used our stem separation technology to address high-cost, post-production challenges including copyright infringement, localization, ASR transcription and remastering. These teams can control and work with audio as they would a clip or frame from a piece of content to take advantage of opportunities that were once closed to them.

Connect with New Audiences

Localization is a key marketing tool that entertainment leaders like Netflix and YouTube have already prioritized to expand their market reach, and the payoff is clear. YouTube creators testing multi-language dubbed videos have seen over 15% of their watch time come from views in the video’s non-primary language, with viewers watching over two million hours of dubbed video content in January 2023 alone.

Today, it’s possible for any company to localize even without the big budgets of these big-time streamers. AudioShake’s technology is available via its API and self-service website as well as through integrations with companies like cielo24, OOONA, Yella Umbrella, Papercup and more to make transcription and localization affordable and accessible to creators of all sizes.

Using AudioShake, clients can separate the dialogue, music and effects separation from a piece of audio to create clean dialogue tracks that can improve the accuracy rates of ASR transcription by upward of 25%. These dialogue tracks can also be removed while retaining the original music and effects, so the new dubbed dialogue can be easily added. This was the case for PandaStorm, who used AudioShake to dub the BBC’s original series “Doctor Who” into German and open up revenue streams in new global markets.

Capitalize on Existing Content

Fines for music infringement can cost sports broadcasters millions of dollars each year. For sports leagues or individual creators, copyrighted music hurts budgets, content pipelines and marketing strategies and leaves them with a swath of unusable content. AudioShake’s music removal service makes it possible to remove music while retaining the original dialogue and effects from a piece of content, leaving a natural-sounding video devoid of risky, copyrighted content. Music removal can reduce content takedowns, high-cost penalties and fees around copyright infringement, and open up catalogs of content for utilization.

Create new sound experiences

Stems are the creative building blocks behind immersive and interactive content experiences in the broadcast space. Found in sports, gaming, UGC and more, these experiences bring viewers closer to content by mixing soundscapes around them or making them reactive to movements. Only now with stem separation can teams experiment and expand into next-generation revenue streams for their new and existing content. As evidenced by trends seen at the NBA Tech Summit, SXSW and CES, the rise of AR/VR to immerse viewers into content experiences will dictate a future where custom sound experiences will become more necessary – and eventually, the standard.

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AudioShake will be exhibiting at the 2024 NAB Show and demoing its newest DME technologies, including its use across the film, TV and content industries. Visit us in the South and West Hall.

Companies can get in touch with AudioShake’s team at info@audioshake.ai.