We work with and for our customers to make their projects successful. According to these KPIs, HNA's Newscast created with the content automation platform of our customer storyflash is a big success.

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Storyflash is a content automation platform that helps media publishers create new media out of existing content. 

‍Publishers have been facing declining subscriber rates as well as ad revenue for years. Thanks to Aflorithmic’s API.audio, storyflash helps the German media industry to easily create AI audio newscasts that have a direct positive impact on publishers’ bottom lines.

‍Using existing written content, editors are now able to build professional and authentic-sounding news updates in just minutes – all without any previous audio experience, thanks to text-to-speech and AI audio production. These audio newscasts are then monetized with ads.

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About Storyflash

Storyflash is a content automation platform, which is mainly active in the German market. Their customers are publishers such as Focus Online or InStyle, who use storyflash to create social media posts on Instagram or Pinterest.

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Customer Challenge

Since 2000, newspaper revenue in Germany has plummeted from €12B to less than €9B* – a drop of 31%*. Most publishers now look to digital advertising at a main source of income, but even that is on the decline: Revenue generated by display advertising has fallen from €3.4B to just €2.19B* in the same period. To make matters worse, turnover generated from classified advertising has partially moved to pure classified websites such as Ebay Kleinanzeigen – leading to a decline of €2.6B*.

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German newspaper revenues 2000-2019

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‍This loss in revenue has ultimately led to layoffs, a trend that publishers are still battling with today, particularly regional media companies. Meanwhile, German people are increasingly getting their news from social media and online, rather than from print and TV news. As a result, Germany’s digital advertising market has been growing healthily, from literally 0 in the year 2000 to €4B* in 2019.

‍To survive in this new media landscape and take advantage of the growing digital ad market, publishers must boost their digital presence and make their content available across a range of social media channels.

*Source

Why AudioStack?

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Using AudioStack's AI Podcasting Engine came naturally to storyflash for a number of reasons.

‍The API-first approach is great for running automated audio creation behind the scenes. This allows for full control over the frontend and thus a seamless integration to the existing user interface and experience.

‍AudioStack offers dozens of German synthetic voices from a total of 10 voice providers, ranging from tech giants like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Polly to boutique solutions such as Resemble and DeepZen. 

‍Storyflash customers also value that they can choose from a number of existing sound templates specifically made for news creation, enabling them to build a professional-quality podcast simply by pasting text in a field and clicking ‘Create’.

‍Lastly, publishers can use their own podcast hosting solution, ensuring that all advertising profits end up directly in their pockets. 

‍Overall, AudioStack is a one-stop shop that offers all of the ingredients for automated AI audio production.

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Storyflash's newscast automation platform

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Results and Benefits

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In October 2021, HNA, the first customer using the new audio creation tool built on AudioStack infrastructure, went live.

Ever since, the German regional publisher (10M monthly visits) has been using storyflash every day to create their newscast, where they broadcast local news daily. 

‍The podcast is consistently listened to over 5000 times a day and has reached over a million plays since its inception. With a completion rate of 72% the newscast is also well above the 50%** reported by several article readers*. 

‍As a result, adoption seems to be accelerating: between August and September 2022 alone, 12 other German publishers have signed up to the AI audio newscast creation tool on storyflash.

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Newscast built on storyflash using Aflorithmic’s AI Podcasting Engine

**Source

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Bringing your text to life with high-quality voices

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While AudioStack already has the deepest library of voices on the market today, 600+ voices, 60 languages, 100+ sound designs, 50 sound effects in the same API solution, we are always on the lookout for adding the best voice providers to our roster and DeepZen is definitely one of the best ones. We are confident that these 9 new voices in our library will allow you to connect and engage with your audience better than ever.

‍This partnership with DeepZen provides a fantastic means for agencies to create bespoke audio content for their clients without the need for expensive studio production. Integrating DeepZen voices into our API.audio platform will make it easier than ever for publishers, marketers, content creators and more to get their brand out onto social media platforms, apps and websites.

‍Having all of this talent available on a single API, accessible with just a few lines of code is an absolute game-changer to developers tackling complex projects. Now audio production is faster than traditional audio development could ever allow; voice-actors have greater opportunities than ever to stand out in the industry.

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Much more than just Text-to-Speech

‍Quick, scalable, and affordable, in 2022, digital audio production needs to be all of these things.

Whether it’s basic Text-to-Speech tasks or fully realised complex audio projects that integrate music and multiple voices, Aflorithmic is the go-to source. You don’t even need previous experience tackling the task at hand.

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About

‍AudioStack is a London/Barcelona-based technology company. Its platform enables fully automated, scalable audio production by using synthetic media, voice cloning, and audio mastering, to then deliver it on any device, such as websites, mobile apps, or smart speakers. With this Audio-As-A-Service, anybody can create beautiful sounding audio, starting from a simple text to including music and complex audio engineering without any previous experience required. The team consists of highly skilled specialists in machine learning, software development, voice synthesizing, AI research, audio engineering, and product development.