Rhythm Lab Radio, which is hosted by Tarik Moody from 88Nine Radio Milwaukee, has partnered with artificial intelligence (AI) company Super Hi-Fi to use AI in its radio broadcast.
The partnership will create a new digital station that will complement Moody’s weekly on-air broadcast with a 24/7 listener experience, according to a press release. Rhythm Lab Radio features a mix of jazz, electronic, hip-hop and soul music and is focused on highlighting new artists who cross musical categories.
The Super Hi-Fi AI technology stitches together thousands of pre-selected songs and segments of Moody’s broadcast voice into a fluid audio stream, Moody said. It creates an experience that feels like Moody is live on the air, even when he is not.
Moody said 88Nine Radio Milwaukee is the first public radio station in the U.S. to use this AI technology, which could support smaller stations – who lack the staff or resources of a larger company like iHeartRadio – by making their broadcasts last for longer periods of time with more content.
“This is the first step, it’s an experiment,” Moody said. “This is an opportunity to at least level the playing field and create new experiences and get new audiences – and more importantly new revenues – so that we cannot only survive, but thrive.”
The AI also automates functions that the radio host usually has to manually perform, like lowering the volume at the end of a song to talk over it or following timers, Moody said. In addition to making the radio host’s job easier, the technology also opens the door to creating new radio channels with archived interviews or songs.
For Moody, the AI gives public radio stations more subscription-based revenue opportunities that could replace the donation model traditionally used in the industry.
“One of the top syndicated public radio shows, World Cafe out of Philadelphia, has been around for thirty years … imagine taking all that content – the interviews, the music, the storytelling, all that, and creating a 24/7 experience,” Moody said. “Then public radio can also monetize that.”
But while some larger commercial media companies are trying to use this AI to replace radio show hosts, Moody said 88Nine looks at it as a chance to instead expand hosts’ reach.
“We see the opportunity to enhance – especially (for) public radio – our expertise of curation and storytelling in a new way,” Moody said. “We’re really focused on content and not the technology.”
That reach could come through the AI helping local radio shows reach markets across the U.S. by featuring content from those areas and also soliciting advertisers where the station is popular, Moody said.
Moody is hoping to create a new jazz stream by the second or third quarter of 2023, which he sees as a testing ground to see how well the AI works and is received by listeners on a national level.
Moody also is the program director for Hyfin, 88Nine Radio Milwaukee’s urban alternative channel that started alongside Juneteenth this year on June 19. Hyfin plays a wide range of the Black "diaspora" of music – including dance or house jazz music – that commercial urban stations often leave out, Moody said.
If the AI works well on Rhythm Lab Radio and the upcoming jazz stream, Moody hopes to eventually incorporate it into Hyfin and the 88Nine channel.
“It’s kind of like how you do startups,” Moody said. “The jazz station is kind of my way to test this product and really put it through the wringer before I push it to Hyfin or even 88Nine … my goal is to create a whole type of new experience.”
