Episode 61
Follow The Host
Rewind: Asynchronous Audio Technology
Can you imagine a world where audio content creation is as simple as clicking a button? Carl Robinson, the brain behind Rumble Studio, is bringing that dream to life by revolutionizing asynchronous interview audio technology. We journey through the fascinating world of audio content, exploring the rise of branded podcasts, the endless possibilities that come with audio, and how Rumble Studio's innovative technology is making it easier, quicker, and more affordable for anyone to create audio content.
Ever fancied living and working in a foreign country? Carl shares his experiences from a seven-year stint in China, where he kick-started his entrepreneurial journey. Discover the challenges and triumphs of setting up a business in China, the electric energy of the small western community of start-up entrepreneurs, the hurdles he faced due to lack of support mechanisms, and the priceless lessons he learnt from his two start-up projects in China. If you've ever considered moving to China, Carl's intriguing journey and practical advice are not to be missed.
As we venture further into the world of audio, we uncover the immense potentials of voice technology and the ongoing challenges in its development. We discuss how far we are from having voice assistance that can understand and interpret our commands as humans would. Carl also shares his insights on the growing importance of audio in communication, why audio is the most effective content for building trust, and how the future of advertising games, video, and audio content are merging. This episode is not just a peek into the future of audio technology but a treasure trove of advice and insights for entrepreneurs, remote workers, and anyone interested in the fast-evolving world of start-ups.
Topics of Discussion
Carl’s Resources
About The Show
Thoughts of a Random (Citizen Remote Podcast) is a podcast oriented around open ideas, entrepreneurship, travel, investing, politics, philosophy, and an odd take on history. Together with Toarc United & Citizen Remote we talk with thought leaders from all around the world to stir the innovative mind. This podcast specifically talks about the importance of having an international perspective, the ins and outs of the business world, the entrepreneurial life, the digital nomad life, investing and ways to enjoy life in the new age.
Businesses worldwide have very quickly oriented themselves around freelancing, digital nomads, remote workers, and diluting borders. If you'd like to find out how you can benefit on an individual or entrepreneurial level from that change, this podcast is for you & Citizen Remote can help.
If you’re a startup, needing to find useful tools, wanting to build custom software or generally struggling with the next steps you should be taking to optimize your companies bottom line Toarc United&
Episode 61
Follow The Host
Rewind: Asynchronous Audio Technology
Can you imagine a world where audio content creation is as simple as clicking a button? Carl Robinson, the brain behind Rumble Studio, is bringing that dream to life by revolutionizing asynchronous interview audio technology. We journey through the fascinating world of audio content, exploring the rise of branded podcasts, the endless possibilities that come with audio, and how Rumble Studio's innovative technology is making it easier, quicker, and more affordable for anyone to create audio content.
Ever fancied living and working in a foreign country? Carl shares his experiences from a seven-year stint in China, where he kick-started his entrepreneurial journey. Discover the challenges and triumphs of setting up a business in China, the electric energy of the small western community of start-up entrepreneurs, the hurdles he faced due to lack of support mechanisms, and the priceless lessons he learnt from his two start-up projects in China. If you've ever considered moving to China, Carl's intriguing journey and practical advice are not to be missed.
As we venture further into the world of audio, we uncover the immense potentials of voice technology and the ongoing challenges in its development. We discuss how far we are from having voice assistance that can understand and interpret our commands as humans would. Carl also shares his insights on the growing importance of audio in communication, why audio is the most effective content for building trust, and how the future of advertising games, video, and audio content are merging. This episode is not just a peek into the future of audio technology but a treasure trove of advice and insights for entrepreneurs, remote workers, and anyone interested in the fast-evolving world of start-ups.
Topics of Discussion
Carl’s Resources
About The Show
Thoughts of a Random (Citizen Remote Podcast) is a podcast oriented around open ideas, entrepreneurship, travel, investing, politics, philosophy, and an odd take on history. Together with Toarc United & Citizen Remote we talk with thought leaders from all around the world to stir the innovative mind. This podcast specifically talks about the importance of having an international perspective, the ins and outs of the business world, the entrepreneurial life, the digital nomad life, investing and ways to enjoy life in the new age.
Businesses worldwide have very quickly oriented themselves around freelancing, digital nomads, remote workers, and diluting borders. If you'd like to find out how you can benefit on an individual or entrepreneurial level from that change, this podcast is for you & Citizen Remote can help.
If you’re a startup, needing to find useful tools, wanting to build custom software or generally struggling with the next steps you should be taking to optimize your companies bottom line Toarc United&
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Thoughts of a Random Citizen. This is actually an episode that you might have already heard before if you've been a listener from the start. This is because we are currently in the process of repurposing all of our old podcast episodes and cleaning up the entire feed. These changes will allow listeners to enjoy the best episodes and highlight the most insightful content. Now, if you're newer to this podcast and wondering where to find, or why you can't find, season 1 and 2, don't worry. They'll eventually be available on our website, torquianadacom. We do some fun, tear-i-say, innovative things with them, but stay tuned for that.
Speaker 1:In the meantime, we plan to release rewines every other week to repurpose older podcast episodes. This will simply just allow listeners to revisit classic content from insightful and featured guests and enjoy it in a new light at a different time in their life, to hopefully provide a new perspective. But at the end of the day, it's our intention to bring the best possible content to you. So enjoy this repurposed rewind, but at the end of the day, sticks and stones people break your bones. The word shouldn't really hurt you. I'm the kind of person who really likes to get to the bottom of things, and I don't let my own belief system get in the way of fact.
Speaker 2:It's one of the most important financial centers in the world by the terms of freedom of speech, expression and civil liberties and certifications.
Speaker 1:Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Thoughts of a Random Citizen. Today I'm joined by Carl Robinson, a leader in the voice tech space and founder and CEO of Rumble Studio, a company that is innovating how people create and listen to audio content. Carl is a very knowledgeable guest and we get into some really cool applications about where the audio industry is headed and where it's currently at. We discuss in detail what all Rumble Studio, his company, is doing with its innovative audio technology for podcasts, how the future of advertising games, video and audio content are merging into one, what exactly is a branded podcast, and why Alexa is further away to a normal conversation than most people would probably hope. In addition, I also asked Carl what it was like living in China for seven years and what the international startup communities are like there and in France, where he currently resides. So I hope you guys enjoyed this interview I had with Carl Robinson.
Speaker 1:Alright, welcome everyone. My guest today is Carl Robinson, CEO and co-founder of Rumble Studios, a startup in Paris on the frontier of asynchronous interview audio technology. Carl, welcome to the podcast man. Hey, Hugh, great to be here, Cheers man. So I want to get to travel in a moment, specifically Paris and then China. But as I dive more into your technology, the more I see it being groundbreaking, especially when incorporating AI. First off, can you walk us through what your company Rumble Studio does?
Speaker 2:Sure, rumble Studio is an online tool. It's a SaaS that helps creators, agencies and companies create audio content like podcasts much more quickly, easily and more affordably. The unique part of our solution is that we don't run live interviews, like we're doing now, but asynchronous interviews which are, as a brand, like take turns interviews. Essentially, you set the questions up front, send an invitation to your guest or guests, you can interview as many people as you want at the same time, and then the guests are interviewed by Rumble Studio automatically in their own time.
Speaker 1:And when you say they're interviewed by Rumble Studio. Can you elaborate on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. We're a young startup and we're building this thing in phases. Right now we're at the phase one, I would say, which means that you can write and record the questions into Rumble Studio and then send them. So the experience right now for the guest is a bit like a type form, questionnaire form, but with the addition of the audio capture. So a guest would click the public link or the link that you share, they go straight into Rumble Studio, they can read the question and then they can optionally listen to it as well, like listen to the host actually speak it, and there's a lot more feeling and detail in the audio and then they can record their answer and then, when they're happy with it, they can move to the next question. If they're not, they can delete, they can redo, they can build their question up in multiple parts, they can go make a cup of tea, think about the answer and then come back and record it again. So there's a number of advantages to that which you can get into if you like, but they go through it question by question and it's you know we have.
Speaker 2:So the core of it is recording audio from the guest, but there's also the ability to capture text images. You know you don't have to chase them for their profile picture. You can upload videos and we're adding more and more of these, these types, no types we call them all the time, but right now it's a static type questionnaire. There's no follow ups and, as a host, when you capture that audio, when you go back into the platform, you download it essentially or you load it up into our export mix feature. You see your questions, you see the guest answer, next question, guest answer and you have the option to then record a follow up comment or some other kind of narrative. So that's how you can simulate a real conversation. But in Rumble Studio, the version today, there's no ability to ask follow up questions on the fly as the guest is recording, which is the vision for Rumble.
Speaker 1:That was one of the things that I thought of when doing it. I mean it's really great because you can give these really thoughtful responses and you know, as opposed to you know and kind of blabber something out there. So I really liked that aspect to it. But then you're going to incorporate something to where you can do a fault, so like you'll be able to monitor when a guest is recording their response and then just shoot over wherever you're at. Shoot over a follow up.
Speaker 2:Well, this is the AI bit that we're coming into.
Speaker 2:So phase two and this is actually what our data scientists are working on at the moment is a set of technologies that listens to what the guest says, so they hear the question, they record their first answer. That answer is recorded in audio. It's then transcribed into text and then it's run through a series of modules that we're developing to extract different features from their speech, both text form and audio form. So in text we can do things like pull out keywords using named entity recognition and analyze those. We can identify the topics in general that they're talking about using topic modeling, but we can also analyze the audio so we can use there are many software that do these today the emotion detection, sentiment analysis, figure out how they're feeling. We can measure the speed at which they're speaking so we can coach them to speak more quickly and more slowly. We build up all these characteristics on how they said and what they said, the content and then we can build the decision making part of that which then decides how to react.
Speaker 1:So the follow up isn't done by the host, it's done by the AI.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. The other thing I want to do for Rumble is to be able to generate a follow up question in real time and put it to the guests. So to give you some examples, say, a guest gives a particularly short answer, which is not great for a podcast. Very easy to measure the length of their response. You can just say, oh, could you tell me a bit more? Please continue. Right, it's super easy. It's a curiosity. You probably don't even need AI to do that, yeah, or you know they could mention a keyword that's like super hot in the news. You know, maybe they mentioned Will Smith.
Speaker 2:Yeah so you'd be like. So what do you think about the Will Smith thing? You know? So these open questions, you know they lead the guests to talk a bit more and in that way you can capture more audio For the same amount of effort. And bearing in mind, you just written one question to rumble and just sent the link. So at this point rumbles, doing all for you, they're asking these follow up questions, capturing more audio and at the same time it's making the experience more dynamic for the guest. So they like okay, this isn't just a questionnaire Now, it's really asking me on the spot stuff I haven't prepared. So it's making it more spontaneous and that improves the audio for the listener.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's really unique considering the way podcasts are done. Now it's live. You know we're talking on squad cast, but the more I thought about it, I've been deep diving myself into a p? I in creating ways to automate workflows, and this technology seems to pair perfectly with that. You can, literally, after you, send over the question list. If you automate properly, your podcast is done and published in your. That's it, I can. You don't have to do anything else. So for sure, that's. That's just incredible. I think the applications that rumble studio has so Is really really cool there. But what kind of organizations and individuals are you seeing this technology helping the most today?
Speaker 2:So we're running experiments with the three main segments, which are individual creators, influencers, and we've got a number of projects running at the moment. We've got agencies, like marketing agencies, who wanna Create audio content for their customers as quickly as possible, as cheaply as possible, and also offer new, innovative forms of content to their customers. And then we've got brands who wanna create branded podcast for themselves, or indeed audio segments that they can then convert into videos for social media or put on their website or for whatever reason they wanna create audio Generally. You know what runs thinking about podcast these days, because podcast super hot.
Speaker 1:So those are the three yeah cool. So we're gonna come back to audio and dive a lot more into everything that you're doing the space, but as I always like to talk about travel in this, I wanna touch briefly On your time spent in china, where, if I'm not mistaken, you live for seven years. Is that right?
Speaker 2:I say seven years in china.
Speaker 1:So can you tell us a bit about that experience and then kind of what initially made you leave the UK and if people are familiar with your accent, that's obviously where from?
Speaker 2:Appreciate you know thing. Yeah, yeah. So I I start my career as a science graduate and I did a few years in management consultancy, which is like in city of london, which is great, but not really the job for me. That was like the push factor, the poll factor towards china. Number of things, my friend, and move there and still start up, you know, super cheap. To live over here is a great experience. This is back in 2009, so china was a little bit different back then and number of things happened in my personal life as well which you know really maybe wanna have a you know, change in career. I liked working, the big city wasn't for me, so that was the reason why I moved over there and I don't regret it for a second because it was a fantastic experience yes, so I'm curious what is the entrepreneurial environment like?
Speaker 1:Why, guess? It's probably a bit different now and you can talk please on that if you know anything about it, but when you went over there was the entrepreneurial environment like for startups.
Speaker 2:Yes, good question. So there was a lot of energy. There's a lot more going on than I thought. I mean, I would say that I was more exposed to the like, the small western community of startup entrepreneurs, than the, the enormous virgin in community of chinese start up entrepreneurs like that. They, I think they mix a lot more now, but when I was there they were a little bit more separate and you know there's no comparison in terms of size.
Speaker 2:I think starting a start up in china is a very difficult thing and anyone who does it successfully hats off to them, because I mean, china is very, you know, protective of the way they do business. I know there's a lot of horror stories of you know western, as you do set a business over there and as soon as they achieve a level of success, the government just sweeps in, just basically steals off of them, moves over to a chinese partner. So I mean you have to now and even then, set up your business with a chinese partner. They won't let you just create a business on your own and just extract value from their country, like that. But even so, like the support mechanisms compared to what I've just I've found to be in the case in france and I want to be the case in london and the us.
Speaker 2:They were just not there, like when I was there, that it was very, very piecemeal. They didn't follow through which I actually did a start up competition. We got second place in this like hackathon weekend, which is cool. Let us start people, the district of chow, yang actually said, yeah, we're gonna support you and stuff, and then you know the meetings to follow. Just they want to organize. It fell apart. It was clear that they want to commit to the process and they just wasn't the support framework that I discovered in europe. So it's very, very difficult.
Speaker 1:Yes, so I guess what kept you there for those seven years then?
Speaker 2:What I did? A number of different things, I mean I was so when I first got there, I started this first start up my friend, which was this translation marketplace, will complete noobs, you know, didn't know what we're doing around. Start up, like I say, there wasn't huge amount of support as well, so we're just winging it and learning on the fly. Yeah, good weather learn. But you know it's a, it takes time. You gotta invest in making the mistakes, and so this thing dragged on, partly because we we hired like an agency like it was a very small agency to stop building the code, which I think is the number one you really need a cto can actually build it in the company and then. So that was just dragging.
Speaker 2:And then it was taking so long that we actually set up a second second thing, which is an iphone app my friends idea. So let's build a small, simple iphone app. Healthy eating will just help people track their fruit and veg consumption, for that sounds cool. Three of us actually put in a thousand dollars each, took us six months to build it. We actually got this really cool freelancer just to build the code. Really amazing designer as well, from the us, did incredible job with the graphics and it all just came together because it was a much more smaller, more manageable project. It came together. We got this really high quality product out.
Speaker 2:I should end up getting featured by apple on the itunes store, like back then was a lot easier than it is today, but got like a load of downloads, got really excited and we got contacted by this company, actually offered to buy it and we actually started for a considerable sum, which is amazing. It gives like loads of confidence. That you know like entrepreneurship was was amazing. You know it's possible and give us some some money, which goes a lot further in china, to be able to continue doing the first start up, which ended up eating a lot of that money, which we ended up abandoning after four years of the first idea lasted four years and the second start up idea maybe lasted about a year and it was much more profitable. So that was the two things that did that.
Speaker 2:And then I joined an american startup, go gather health, which is An incredible experience. I got to work as a product manager there and go through a full start up journey. They were funded. You know I was working in a team of I think thirty one point split between china and india, so just that was an amazing experience as well. So those that was really my career in china.
Speaker 1:So if you could give someone one piece of advice if they wanted to go to china, which maybe not as much interest these days from what you hear in light of recent events One would you recommend it today. And then what would that advice be if they said screw them going.
Speaker 2:Identify, recommend it not not to have the same experience I did.
Speaker 2:Anyway, I would absolutely recommend visiting china and I would say, if you do, you need to go with someone who speaks chinese and is a proper guide, to get a guide who knows the city and can take you around, cause it's very hard place to visit.
Speaker 2:I don't know about living there now, because the prices have gone way up, the government is like way harsher on like a lot of things, and there isn't that kind of feeling of Other than economy in a society changing as quick. I mean that they changing, of course, and they're developing quickly, but not in the same way as 2009 and, to be honest, I got there a little bit late. The bigger changes happened in the decades before that. So I think, if you really want that kind of that feeling of being in a country that's just going through massive changes and there's a lot of opportunity, go to one of the more, one of the other countries developing more quickly. You know, I hear about a vietnam, for example. Maybe you'll have more of a A similar experience that today than as I did in 2009 in china okay, nice, nice.
Speaker 1:and then, what was the city that you were based out of?
Speaker 2:I am Beijing. Yeah, okay, cool yeah.
Speaker 1:And then. So now I know you're living in France, I believe, since 2016. I was gonna ask why the change, but I assume I kind of figured it out. I guess why, though France specifically?
Speaker 2:For a number of reasons. So in Beijing I met my now wife, veronique. Just sat over there, so she's French. I happen to have French citizenship as well because my family history, so I've got dual nationality. Oh sweet, yeah, convenience Brexit was a little bit of a problem at the time as well, so coming to France was like super easy for me and I wanted to study, so I went back to school and the universities in France are excellent and much cheaper than the UK. So I ended up doing a two year debt science masters in France as well, for a fraction of the cost it would be in the UK, and I wouldn't even want to think what it costs in the US. Oh, dude.
Speaker 1:No, you don't Just end it there.
Speaker 2:That's it. So yeah, lots of reasons.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so obviously you say you have dual nationality. Did you speak a little French and then did you pick up Mandarin? How was the language barrier traveling to such I mean, pretty, I would dare to say proud non-English speaking countries in China and France?
Speaker 2:Well, they got that reputation. But, to be honest, especially in the people I meet in the circles like the startup world, the tech world, everyone speaks really good English. It's a hard work for a Brett or an English speaker to improve their French. I know, maybe it sounds like an excuse, maybe it is, but it's hard work to improve your French when everybody's like oh no, we can speak English if you want, you know, and you're like all right, let's just speak English, because when you're in a conversation you start in French, then they immediately realize that the conversation would be easier.
Speaker 1:It's terrible, like you cannot learn another language if you're English, because one they want to practice and two they're like, not offended, but they're just like God. I don't want to waste my time, right, yeah, you're wasting their time, in a way, just using them for language practice.
Speaker 2:Yeah so it's hard work. But yeah, I know it's important to get to a certain level because it shows you're making an effort and there are certain things like administration getting around. You do need to know a level of French, but you don't need to be 100% fluent. China was very difficult in the first two years. I would say it's much harder because they really don't speak as much English and I was very reliant on my friends in the first couple of years. Then I learned enough to be able to do a lot of stuff on my own, like go to the bank and sharpen all that, but still nowhere near enough to be able to work.
Speaker 1:And I would assume Mandarin man, that's like French. You can understand a bit like it's kind of evolved almost together and from the same background but, Mandarin, that's just completely.
Speaker 2:It's very, very different. Yeah, no, definitely. I mean to be honest. I know people there who speak, in my opinion, fluent Chinese, but it's not fluent enough for them to be competitive in the workspace. So, even though they're amazing at speaking Chinese and they've invested years of their life, they're still not able to develop their career in the way they want and they end up moving back to the States or wherever just because do you know what I mean? There's that barrier, so it's really hard work.
Speaker 1:Wow. So we'll wrap up the travel aspect here. I just want to ask one more thing Do people in France eat dinner at 10.30 like they do over here in Spain?
Speaker 2:I don't think so. I haven't noticed that. No, no, it's early. I don't think it's as early as the UK. I think they eat around eight maybe, or it's a little bit later, but maybe it's not as late as somewhere like Spain or somewhere like where they really go late.
Speaker 1:I've gotten used to it now, but I was at dinner the other night and it was at 10.30 in a restaurant and I go, am I really eating at 10.30? And this is normal for me?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's madness, but yeah, but anyways. Back to audio. You've been in the voice technology space for some time now, obviously, not only founding your current company, rumble Studio, but your popular voice tech podcast. You're no doubt considered a leader and an innovator in the voice tech space, as more and more tools and software come out and cut down the traditional time and length it takes to produce and edit audio content, rumble Studio being one of them. How do you see the growth of this industry over the next five years?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great question.
Speaker 2:So when I joined the voice tech community a few years ago, there was a lot more buzz, it was a lot newer and there was a lot of optimism that the voice interfaces would be the new apps, the new mobile apps, because you could install them as skills or enable these skills and then they would solve all variety of your day-to-day problems, just like we use apps on our phone. But that hasn't really transpired. I mean, there are certain apps that are handy, but generally there's only two or three really kind of killer apps on a smart speaker which is like music, for example, on-demand music, like utility, like smart home being able to turn off light switches, these kind of things access features on your phone like you can do with Siri, these basic transactional tasks. But we're still a long way off from being able to speak naturally with a device and enjoy some of the kind of high-level benefits that were promised back then.
Speaker 2:The trends today are moving more towards the enterprise, which was something that didn't happen at the beginning. At the beginning it was much more consumer-focused, with smart speakers coming out and the enterprise taking a backseat, really. And then things have moved more towards the enterprise and especially call centers and customer service, all of these kinds of things. So this is what I understand from speaking with other experts in the field that things are moving more towards the enterprise and will continue to do so for the foreseeable.
Speaker 1:Really, that's news to me.
Speaker 1:I mean speaking of the audio industry you were kind of just touching on it, but considering you went back to France to obtain a master's degree in data science where you learned how to code specifically for AI, I'm curious how far off you think we are to having voice assistance for the consumers that you can interact with and teach via your own voice. I kind of wanted to emphasize on that teaching aspect, Not like Jarvis-y if you're familiar with Marvel, but whereas Alexa some of the easy small customizations she defaults to, I can't do that or do-do and just shuts up. So I guess how far are we off from you being able to teach via voice commands, a voice application?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I completely know the frustration because I've got the Google stuff set up at home and I ask the same things of it every day and it's still the same problem.
Speaker 2:It's incredible. So I think we're still a way off, to be honest, because there's a lot of variables that they still need to fix. There's the different audio conditions, the different accents I mean, I live in a bilingual household, as you imagine, and it's awful with French, it really is and just, I think also the investment in the consumer aspects, I think, has declined. I don't think the companies are investing as much now that the hype has died down and there doesn't seem to be as much money in it, and so the research will continue. For sure, like no doubt, we will get there, but I think we're a few years off it working flawlessly and more than that, to have a genuine back and forth, interesting conversation. I think there is definitely research to be done there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because what? Amazon Alexa, which was kind of the forefront leader of this space? How long ago did that come out? Almost five to what, not 10 years ago, I don't know. Time starts to fly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think almost 10 years yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. So it feels like after they released that they were like all right project done and then no updates. I mean, what would it require? Is it some kind of translation from your voice into coding? Because I mean, that's got to be pretty complex for that to really come down to being able to teach and train a voice, a bot, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's a huge stack of technologies, from being able to translate the audio of your voice into text and then to be able to interpret the text and that's really where a lot of the work goes is the natural language understanding, like figuring out what it is that you meant, not the words that you said, but even with perfect words, you could mean a number of different things. Right, there's a lot of nuance there, a lot of context. I need to know who you are personally. I need to know where you are, like what you were doing at the time, how you're feeling, what it is that you were trying to achieve two minutes ago which adds context to what you're trying to do now.
Speaker 2:There's a huge amount of stuff that, as humans, we just take the grout and we just wrap all that up and we're like, okay, I know what he wants and machines really struggle with that, you know. But I mean, I get disappointed from that. You know, just turning on a light switch is obvious what I want, right, it's unambiguous and still there's problems with it. So I think there's a lot of the hype has died down because people feel a little bit despondent that it can't even do simple things like that reliably. It's not a reliable light switch, you know, and it's embarrassing if you use it in front of people.
Speaker 1:You're like Alexa, I totally get it. Well, it's almost. You can see it. You know many people probably aren't aware of this, but as a podcaster we translate things for Google search to you know, put in a post and you can see on just a robotic translation how terrible it is. Not only miswords but it puts, you know, abbreviations in the wrong places. I mean it doesn't understand almost at all what you're saying, but I'm curious to what you're referring to, how organizations are now focusing on the enterprises, what applications? You said call centers, but what is the main focus and transition, I guess, to that enterprise?
Speaker 2:Yeah to answer, I'm not entirely sure. It's been a while since I've covered this stuff and on my podcast I haven't spoken to as many people working in the enterprise because I was more enthused about the consumer type. I understand that these core technologies, that we have to think about them as more than just smart speakers. So they're not just consumer devices that you transact, you know, transact within your home, but the natural language understanding, for example, the transcription or the emotion detection, can be used in the back end for big enterprise installations like call centers.
Speaker 2:So, to give you an example, there's a company that I worked at called bat voice dot AI who do like a dashboard that helps customer service agents do their job better by measuring the emotion, the intent and various other characteristics of both the agent and the customer they're speaking to, so they can give like a live dashboard for the agent to say oh, this customer is getting more irate or this customer is more likely to buy, so they can adapt. The same thing can be used in the IVR, the interactive voice response. I think it is that you know press one to go to this, press two that we all hate that right, so that it's moving from from that pressing keys with these huge menus to asking you what you want and then you telling it and then it hopefully accurately interpreting, like what you want and directing you through to the right service. And so there are motion detections, really useful right to be able to hear whether the customers annoyed, like just just put me through. Okay, all right, like I'm going to quit, you know so.
Speaker 1:I'll just zero, zero. Let me do yeah, agent agent probably like five minutes one time just saying let me talk to someone and eventually you know it eventually get you there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're just going the default route, so that's not what you want really is it's for people to be circumventing your technology.
Speaker 1:So you talked about the emotional aspect of understanding voice audio. How and I guess is rumble studio incorporating that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the emotion thing. So we're actually working on that right now. So you want to do it like a basic sentiment analysis, like emotion detection on the voice. You can classify the voice and you know like five or six different basic emotions, and and then that's just one component or one characteristic that we take into account in order to make a decision as to what to do next. And so it's similar to the IVR system, but with rumble.
Speaker 2:The purpose is to be able to understand the guests well enough to be able to decide either to give them some kind of coaching to help them answer better, or to offer like a new question in order to move the conversation forwards. Or maybe there are some other things that we can develop in the future, you know, but, but right now it's those two things, and they're really the skills that you know you have as a professional podcaster, right you're? You're always thinking do I need to encourage the guests more? Do I need to ask them for more information to like, keep this thought going, or do I need to switch to a different topic to make the the episode, you know flow better and and you know, bring new ideas into the episode, right? So you're always having to make those decisions like have we talked enough about this topic? Is there more to go? Is there more information to be extracted? Or, if we, you know, okay, that that topic's done, now let's move.
Speaker 2:So and and for that I think you need to, you need to measure a lot of different things as to what the guests were saying. We've actually don't give away all the secrets, but we're, you know, we we leverage things like concept models as well to be able to you know hierarchies that already exist, ontologies, things like that that actually know what the structure of ideas and concepts are, and so you can go down the rabbit hole thanks to these and propose questions that you can get one from our own bank of questions that we're developing, you know, like template questions, templated questions, but also from looking perhaps online Search engines and things like that can can show you the questions that people are interested in hearing the answers to, and so we can look at API's that that show us these questions and reformulate those into a way that work on a podcast, and that's the way that we can move the conversation in a direction that makes sense in terms of the conversation that's already happened, but also talking about things that people actually want to listen to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, it's incredible. So if in 10 years or five years I don't know how long, you know, I don't want to make a timeline for you, but let's say you implement all of the things that you want to do with Rumble Studio, that technology obviously sounds like it could be applicable for other things as well, do you see, if you know? That's why I gave you 10 years, just for a safe cushion all of what you want to be implemented correctly, it moving over into other things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, for sure. So right now we're focusing on podcasts, like I say, because it's super hot, but there's internal podcast, company communications for bigger companies, there's gathering, client testimonials, reviews, this kind of a thing, as they could be recruitment interviews could be used by politicians, for example, to engage the public influences to ask me anything or answer questions over social media. Like you know, that the ability to have automated conversations at scale or with people is is something that's inspired the voice technology community for a long time through these smart speaker type applications. But I think more and more will be used for engagement with, with communities, just to you know, not necessarily to answer customer service questions, but just to create engagement so that to provide these new interactive experiences between brands or individuals and their audiences and, at the same time, because these are automated, you can record that content and be able to use it for your content marketing. So this is the thing that I'm really excited about like to be able to create content interactively with your audience.
Speaker 1:Geez, in that same light, one thing you said is that audio is most effective content for building authority trust and leads. Can you kind of elaborate on why audio specifically is so effective at doing those things?
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely so. You know, audio is the most intimate form of content. You're directly, you know, whispering your words into the person's ear over a long period of time. So that's a very influential and, you know, method of communicating with someone very personal. It gives people the time to absorb a lot of ideas here, all the richness of the tone of your voice, and think about it at the same time, because it's a pressure they're consuming, so that processing is a much more, I think, much more active experience than watching TV. You know, you're just like staring at TV and having these images wash over you and maybe some of the words are going in or not. Whatever, you know, the podcasting is much more active and that's why I think it's great for educating audiences and also inspiring people, motivating people as well, you know, because you really get in the message across, and that's what brands and individuals Everybody really wants to do is. They want to communicate their ideas and influence other people, and I think audio is just superb at that.
Speaker 1:That's such a good point to with what you said about being more interactive even than TV, because where TV does not let your imagination run, it just tells you pretty much what you're supposed to imagine. To an extent, audio allows your brain to kind of fill in that picture. So I guess, as more and more businesses adapt to this audio content model for things like advertising and brand awareness, do you see the effectiveness and authority and trust that we were just talking about kind of taking a U-turn.
Speaker 2:How do you mean? The more that brands use audio content, the more what full of ads is going to become? Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 1:I guess like, whereas social media you know Facebook or Twitter, today it has a lot of advertisement, first mindsets in the sense of subliminal messaging, and I just am curious, as we were just talking, audio content has this authority for trust and leads For the individual consumer. Does that take a turn if we get to a point of Facebook?
Speaker 2:ask.
Speaker 1:Twitter. Ask you see what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no idea, and and it's something that brands really need to watch out for. So Branded podcast, which is a certain type of podcast, is a podcast created by the brand themselves, as opposed to them putting ads on other people's podcast, which is Right now, I think, a one billion plus dollar industry in the US alone. So that exists is growing fast, putting ads on the people's podcast. But another aspect that is also growing very fast is creating your own podcast and what.
Speaker 2:The golden rule there is to not stuff it full of ads about yourself, not talk about yourself too much, because nobody wants to listen to a 30 minute or an hour long ad and it completely breaks that trust and intimacy right when you know you just being sold to. People want Content, they want to learn something you want to, they want value from you and, to honest, you got a lot more to gain as a brand or as an influencer. Why just providing that content and building that trust consistently overtime and not stuffing it full of ads? Because that you know that feeling that you generating people will stay with them and then when they come to think of they need for a certain product or they need advice on something, they will naturally look to you and that is at that point that you can influence them. So you have to be very careful. Is that not to say you can't put your brand on it at all, or any links or ads or anything, but you have to be very careful with people's time and respect that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I completely agree. So with the rise of those branded podcasts. And if anyone is familiar with the brand podcast, I don't know if you're familiar specifically the message from GE kind of comes to mind. As this kind of progresses and we get to that point of more branded podcasts, as opposed to just advertising thrown into podcasts, do you see a rise in Hollywood style productions where, like almost a book that is being, you know, blown into your ears because a lot of people instead of you know publishing books are just going straight to audio and there's such a cool use case where you know half of what you get in the movie is the sounds and the audio that comes through. And so I just am curious, like I feel like that's such a great opportunity and for people like GE, you know they don't even have to use their advertisements, say, oh, come by GE, but they make this cool story and then it's just yeah, you're in their world, are you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, exactly, totally, we just listen to it actually. So we've got a podcast club where, like, we listen to a podcast every week and then we get together as a team just discuss it for half an hour, like On a production and a content level, and it's really helpful because we get exposed to all these different types of podcasts, and one of them we listen to recently was the Hypnotists a hypnotist to by BMW and it's it's really cool because it's exactly what you just said. It's like it sounds like a feature film. They've obviously spent a fortune on it, the sound design is unbelievable and it's interactive. The second series is interactive so you can play with it, I think, either on a smart speaker, on the web, and it's a bit like choose your own adventure, where you hear this real amazing chapter and then you decide where you're gonna go and then you hear something related to that.
Speaker 1:So Wow, that's incredible. That's like a video game almost is almost like a video game.
Speaker 2:There's the things emerging and this is actually a really good point, because I think that the world of ads, advertising, promotion and experiences, games and content they're all merging together, what you get to a point where you really can't tell if it's one thing or another. And in the case of hypnotists, they don't mention BMW at all. There's not even a single mention of it, even in the intro. It's just pure value, 100%. But you know it's made by BMW because it's on their website and so it rubs off. You know it builds that the feeling about the brand that they're futuristic and all that.
Speaker 1:Well, and that's what I'm hoping for, like in the future, considering you know, audio space is almost like a black hole for search engines so.
Speaker 1:I feel like it's this blank canvas in which you know these, these audio creators, podcasters, rumble studio has an opportunity to really create outside of what the web currently is today, because it doesn't have, you know, I'll call it you know the monopoly that it is, that our search engines to kind of filter you through how they want. So I guess, do you think that, as a community, podcasters have a responsibility proper implementation of, you know, brand podcast, interactive voice adverts and like nano casting.
Speaker 2:Well, I think there's definitely a definitely like an ethos amongst the audio community, like the podcast community, to produce good quality podcast, you know, not stuff it full of ads and all the rest of it. So I think there's also rising competition as well. So if you are producing a poor quality podcast, you're not gonna get the attention now because there's just so many things to choose from. I think the thing I would encourage the most is that people try experimenting and not just fall in and do what everyone else has done before. From everyone at rumble studio is to be innovative, to try new formats with the tools that we're creating, with the tools that already exist, but not just Produce more of the same and what we encounter. A lot of people are very people in the outside world are not directly connected to the audio world. I'm a very kind of have a very fixed view of what podcast is. You know, people talking to each other on a mic and that's basically it.
Speaker 2:But audio is just like video. You know. You think about the number of Different types of TV show and film and types of online video that there are. There's just no comparison, right? Youtube video is nothing like a Hollywood movie, but it's all. Video and audio really should be seen in the same way, not just as two guys you know talking to other on a mic. But you can do anything with audio, just like BMW did, you know. You can do a full feature and there's just many other. You mentioned nano casting, micro casting. You can do a two minute daily update and that can be really habit building. It can be really addictive, can be really useful to keep up to date with stuff. There's just so many possibilities to with audio and it's much earlier than video as well. So really the doors are wide open for creators and start innovators and anyone else to come along and just invent these new formats.
Speaker 1:That's so true. Yeah, and then you said that two minute update from nano casting. That'd be really good for the health app that you guys created, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely. How many of you done for sure? So probably already, but for sure no doubt.
Speaker 1:No, yeah, I just. I just was curious because I myself, I mean I got into podcast because I was hunting for educational content and so like the last thing in the world I want. I mean, obviously it's nice because you can just go, you know 15 second, 15 second and skip all the ads. So it's pretty easy that way. But you know, I guess I personally, in my own opinion, don't want to see it go to something where it's just you know ads all the time, not a. No, I completely agree yeah, I completely agree.
Speaker 2:I think podcasts is like the, the antithesis to all that click baity. You know Performance marketing type stuff you get online. It's more slow, you know you give time to let the ideas develop, etc. And but it is a very time consuming process, you know. So I feel like If we can develop tools that allow this content to be produced more efficiently by a wider variety of people, then we can. We can bring more people into the space, get more ideas into into audio, and I feel like that is a that is a good that we can bring to humanity by having more people create content that is in the way you describe, rather than all this, this clickbait blogs that don't really offer anyone any value.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so cool and rumble studios. Kind of a innovator in that space I would like to think so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd like to think the fact that asynchronous today maybe isn't as dynamic as the conversation we're having right now, but in its place it's I love the guest really think about the ideas that they want to present allows to record and allows to really get everything out. It also allows people who would never Be invited to a podcast or would want to appear on a podcast to have a voice on audio channels, including people who just couldn't, you know, people with physical disabilities, for example. I mean, with asynchronous, you can actually you can record audio with a mic or you can actually synthesize audio with the synthetic voice and the you know, the synthetic voices of today, and the voice clones even, are very, very good, you know, good enough to listen to in audio content. So once you make this, this framework of asynchronous conversations, you can plug in these different modules and open up to a much wider variety of people yeah, yeah, and just that contemplation that you're saying, where a guest actually has an opportunity to sit and think about it.
Speaker 1:It's so unfair, and that's also why I freaking love podcasting, because I spend a long time researching and creating scripts, writing out.
Speaker 1:You know what I want to say, and then you just have to come up with an answer like that yeah, I've taken I don't know how much time crafting scripts for me, so it'd be nice to have that ability to, you know, create what could have been a three hour in depth conversation to finally get you To the answer. You know that you really wanted to give to just be able to respond on your own time, so that's a really, that's really cool. Bouncing back to growth of podcasting, the US has a huge number of listeners compared to the rest of the world. I saw a few months ago about a third of its citizens, over 110 million, listen to podcast, and then I think worldwide it's only about 400 million. So that just kind of shows that.
Speaker 2:Okay, I didn't know that one. Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 1:I think it's about 400 million at the end of like what projected at the end of 2022 or something. So it might not be there quite yet, but, understanding language barriers yourself, how do you see one being able to capture this growth in other countries and places like Europe, like South America, especially in China and India, without you know being able to speak those languages? Is there a technology in any sense that will be able to take that voice and then translate it into languages for those other consumption?
Speaker 2:I would love to love to see rumble studio be able to do that one day, because, especially with synthetic voices anyway, I mean on the, in the asynchronous way for sure you can plan out An interview and then you can invite not just different guests to record answers but different hosts to be able to record answers, different languages. So that's possible today. If you said out correctly so you could. You can already benefit from planning the episode once. I suppose you could translate those questions just using an online translation and then get native speakers to actually speak them. But when you bring synthetic voices into the, into the mix, you could actually do that all yourself. Because imagine, you know you write your 10 questions, you translate them into Japanese and Korean and everything else online, then send them out. You get those answers back. Granted, you probably don't know what the guest is saying you're gonna review as much.
Speaker 2:But rumble studio does transcribe. So if you get the transcription you could then translate that you know back to English and see, and then you could release that content. So it is possible with asynchronous and synthetic to be able to release podcasts in foreign languages.
Speaker 1:I'm assuming this is a bit further out. But then how far off do you think we are to be able to take, like the conversation me and you are having right now, and then taking that and then translating it with our voices into another language?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we're a little ways off to do it all real time and but there is definitely a lot of those models. For example, there at home is a company that does some yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm invested in them actually.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I think that's a good investment, so I'm. So those guys they've got a speech to speech technologies which can change the tone of your voice from one to another, but it can also, you know, if you generate Spanish, for example, it will change your voice into a Spanish accent, so you can read Spanish in a Spanish accent said in the way a Spanish person would say it.
Speaker 2:And speaking English bird. What? Yeah, yeah, so you would speak English, and then you then translate that into into Spanish, but then it's text to speech We'll be able to read. We'll be able to read that Spanish not just in a stock Spanish voice, but in a voice clone of you, but speaking Spanish. So it takes the, the characteristic I think it uses transfer learning or something like that to be able to take the characteristics of a native Spanish speaker, but the, the vocal characteristics of your personal voice, and put them together. So now it's got Spanish speaking Hugh, and authentically so. And there's an influencer called Brian Bailetta from Sounds Profitable that we're actually working with. He's actually using Rumble Studio to do the, the pod scape, which is this interview of different companies in the podcasting space. But he recently did another experiment doing exactly that translating his voice into Spanish using using Veritone and the results were very, very convincing.
Speaker 2:Really but this is an offline, I believe right now it's an offline process, but, Veritone, I think they do have a real time. Real time component to their technology as well. So at some point maybe all of that could be done on the fly and you could be speaking English into your mic and the person on the other end could be hearing perfect Spanish couple of seconds later maybe Geez Well, because I mean I know in the UN they have, well, they have just translators that speak over, correct?
Speaker 1:That's not?
Speaker 2:But that's it. Yeah, yeah, but it's really to keep up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because that would be so ideal, because my view of the future world, especially with travel, is you have your little AirPods in and then you go around and speak to somebody and it's just translated.
Speaker 2:Oh for sure, yeah the Babel fish, you know, just slip it in your ear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but no, that's really cool that they have. I thought it was a hypothetical question, but they actually have it already implemented and created today.
Speaker 2:It's coming. Yeah, not, I haven't seen a real time one where it goes back and forth. That's the thing. That's like the next level, but offline you can do it Like.
Speaker 1:That's what I was more specifically wondering is if there is something offline. But I really didn't think the answer would be yes, so that's really cool.
Speaker 2:No, no for sure. I think one of the things that needs to improve is the, which is improving all the time, is the amount of data voice data that you require to train one of those voices, because perhaps right now you need to spend, you know, a few hours in front of a mic reading certain scripts in order for them to capture all the different syllables and everything. And the cost, because then they have to run it through the, you know, their graphics cards, their machine learning architecture, which is quite costly, but every year this becomes, you know, lower and lower, you know, like the barrier to training your own voice. I've actually trained my voice to at least three or four companies and now it's just a few hundred bucks. But every one of them I won't name names, but every one of them has something wrong with the voice, like they either sound exactly like me but very monotone, or they've got the rhythm of the voice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or the inflectuations are all. Yeah, there's something.
Speaker 2:There's always one that I haven't found, one that's perfect yet, so yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe Rumble Studio.
Speaker 2:Well, Rumble Studio. I want to be able to integrate all of these voice clones and text-to-speech companies because I think that companies will more and more. Companies will train their own branded voices that they own and will be like the sound That'll be the voice of Coca-Cola or the voice of whatever Okay, they own it, and then they will all want to come to a platform at Rumble Studio and just use that voice. So we need to be able to integrate with those partners.
Speaker 1:Well, excellent, Carl. This has been amazing stuff. Man, I appreciate you spending a little extra time with us. I always ask a few questions at the end. If you could take all your life experiences and turn around and give somebody one piece of advice from those experiences, what would that piece of advice be?
Speaker 2:Listen to your gut. Listen to your gut, yeah, but yeah, I mean it won't be cheesy like follow your heart, but yeah, like if you feel like something's not working for you, change it. Like don't ever continue doing something that you think you should do or that you had originally decided was your life plan. Like just look at the evidence and if you feel like there's something that you need to make a change in your life, then just do it.
Speaker 1:I agree with that completely, man, good stuff. And then, where can people reach out to you or get in contact with Rumble Studio Sure?
Speaker 2:So you can go to our brand new website that I've just released RumbleStudio. Simple as that. You can sign up to our newsletter, rumblestudio. If you want to give the product a try, you can sign up through the site or you can book a demo of me. Just Rumble Studio. I'll be happy to what you through it.
Speaker 1:Sweet Carl Robinson. Thank you so much, man, I appreciate your time.
Speaker 2:Likewise Thanks a lot here. It's been great sweet.
Speaker 1:And that wraps up another episode of Thoughts of a Random Citizen. If you guys are familiar with Torque United or Thoughts of a Random Citizen, you'll know that we want to enable entrepreneurs, freelancers, digital nomads and investors to better collaborate and network with one another to implement their innovations around the world. If that seems like something that you're interested in being a freelancer, a startup founder, an entrepreneur who is interested in not only traveling the world but networking with a group of investors head over to Torque United reach out to us and let us know so we can include you on the upcoming platform that we're in the process of developing. And if I can give any bit of advice, I would say the world is a beautiful, freaking place and you shouldn't spend it all in one place. Otherwise, have a great rest of your week. And that wraps up another episode of Thoughts of a Random Citizen. Thank you everyone so much for tuning back in. For those who are new listeners, welcome and I appreciate you joining. I hope you enjoyed the podcast and our guests today.
Speaker 1:If you are new and you're doing anything remote, be sure to check out Citizen Remote. It is fantastic. If you're already traveling the world, it's a great app to join a very quickly growing community. It's a great tool for those who are just about to begin traveling and figuring out how to navigate that, especially if you work remotely. It's a fantastic platform and we continue to build more and more tools for you guys, weekend and week out. Otherwise, if you're an entrepreneur and you're looking for tools or assistance with the next steps of what you need to do with your startup, or if you're looking for software development network connections, reach out to us at Torque United. Otherwise, if you're just tuning in for the conversations, thank you, that's why I love doing what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:Keep tuning in and actually keep a lookout for the not-for-profit that we're about to open up. You know its main focus is going to be on international collaboration and helping build a borderless world, because it's something that I'm very passionate about. That's why I'm not only doing Torque United but Citizen Remote as well. Really exciting stuff on that horizon. Please keep up to date with all of that stuff the not-for-profit and entrepreneurial side of things at Torque United. But again, if you're traveling the world, check out Citizen Remote. If you're wanting to travel the world, if you're a remote worker, check out Citizen Remote. Check out the app we've built for you guys. Check out the platform we've built. It's only growing every single week, so hopefully you guys will take part in that with us. Otherwise, I will speak with everyone in a fortnight. Well then, cheers.