Mike Russell: 0:12

I'm Mike Russell, and later I'll be talking about A.I..

James Cridland: 0:17

So, Mike, firstly, I should probably ask, what is Music Radio Creative.

Mike Russell: 0:20

So we produce jingles, music, voiceovers, everything you can imagine for podcasters, radio people, deejays and businesses. And we've been doing it. Oh, my goodness me, for like 20 years now. And I is kind of starting to come in and do a lot of what we're doing, which is really interesting.

James Cridland: 0:40

Which is why you were talking about, I hear at podcast Asia. What is some of the things that you were talking about?

Mike Russell: 0:48

Well, I love looking towards the future and what's coming next. I've been a big fan of tech all my life. I wish I had a nice title like yours futurologist. But like you said on stage, when you do what you love, you can kind of make the title up and enjoy it. So what did I feature in my session? A lot of tools that I think radio people, audio people, especially podcasters, can use in their processes. So we take take It took a little look at 11 labs with the voice cloning and interesting that a lot of questions came up about you know how commercially safe are a lot of these tools, particularly as we've got big broadcasters here. So that was definitely an interesting debate. And I think we're very much still in the Wild West of A.I. at the moment, and things are yet to be decided, big legal cases. And another thing aside, or the great tools like voice cloning transcription summarization was the ethics of doing things, you know, like do you have permission to clone a guest's voice and change what they say and where do we lie with the ethics on all of that stuff? So very exciting. More than there was time to fit into a small 40 minute session, but it was great. I really enjoyed it.

James Cridland: 1:59

Where do the ethics go then, in terms of this? I mean, if you if I make a change and I get a generative AI thing to make my own voice because I messed up Sam's name and I called him Steve. Do you? That's kind of okay, isn't it?

Mike Russell: 2:14

Yeah, that's okay. I think it gets a bit sketchy where you change the content of what people are saying, but I guess this is not new, right? Journalists have been used to cutting people to sound like they're saying a certain thing forever. So now we can just do it with ease with AI. And I think that's the difference. But yes, I would certainly focus on the positive, like you've rightly pointed out there, that we can use these tools to help us to make a job. That would have been really hard. Oh, I've got to go and rerecord that too. Oh, I can just use AI to quickly overdub that. So yeah, it's great stuff. And I'm definitely focusing on the positive human augmentation aspect and not the replacement aspect.

James Cridland: 2:51

Yet, which is kind of important. So so you mentioned 11 labs in there. What other tools were you talking about?

Mike Russell: 2:58

So in there, Yeah, through a ton. Actually. I did focus I gave a use case for GPT for sales and marketing. I also introduced a lot of the room to perplexity. Now obviously you'll know that and we had a discussion earlier about all the wonderful ways you can use AI to search and summarize things on the internet. And I was stunned actually by your suggestion of the ARC browser. So I think that's going to be my next choice of browser. But perplexity AI introduced certainly for summarizing things. If you want to talk about them in a podcast or a radio show, as much of the audience were interested in hear that you can quickly find relevant stories, summarise them and get most importantly, citations. So unlike hallucinating language models, you know, tools like perplexity and others are now starting to show where they've got the information from, which is good. Still, you don't know if you can trust the information source, but this is the wider debate here. I think the radio days Asia of will it lan back to the traditional media companies like traditional radio stations and newspapers. You go back to them and say well it's it's come from this source, so I know I can trust it.

James Cridland: 4:03

Now, you you are no stranger to conferences and things, but is this your first time in Kuala Lumpur?

Mike Russell: 4:09

The second time I did backpack through here once when I was doing my Aussie New Zealand tour and across the world. So I had one of those round the world tickets. But it's nice to be here in a professional capacity and to me actually so many amazing people. It's a really I think you've noticed this is a warm part of the world. Everyone is open and welcoming, particularly the native Malaysian people of this country are just super friendly, super helpful, willing to answer questions. I've learnt from everything from the favourite dishes of the country to the fact that they love tigers and it's a national emblem of this country. So yeah, I'm super stunned to be here. It's a second time, but I feel like it's really my first proper time here.

James Cridland: 4:50

And how do you see radio and podcasting, the differences in the in the Asian market? Are there a lot of differences or is it actually much, much of a muchness?

Mike Russell: 5:02

Interestingly enough, I had a few conversations and I discovered they really like true crime out here. That was one of my takeaways. And I saw in your great session today at the podcast Asia, you were showing the various different categories that were liked. And yeah, I did seem to be a theme. Also, I think they're using mobile devices a lot more here rather than listening in the browser on the computer. So that's interesting. Yeah, it's a rapidly developing area of the world. I wish that I knew more about it and I feel like I've been introduced to this part of the world just coming here and I'm like, this is this is really curious. I would encourage anyone, no matter where you are in the world, to actually come out to this event next year and just take a look at what's going on in this region, because it's it's just the right size of conference as well. It's kind of I'd say it's kind of in the Goldilocks area. It's not too big, not too small. And you kind of almost get to know most of the people or you certainly see the same faces and and then you start to make friends. So you learn a lot. It's a big learning thing for me.

James Cridland: 6:02

And we know you. I think for both the the music radio creative stuff that you do and I think free jingle Friday, I want to say is that that that's the thing isn't it. But also you do an awful lot of YouTubing and you particularly YouTube around tools and other tools for audio creators where can people firstly, what you do on there and secondly, where can people find them?

Mike Russell: 6:29

Well, thank you. So yes, as you rightly mentioned, I've been on YouTube for 14 years as Mike Russell, you can search me under my name and you'll find all my audio tutorials dating back to 2010 when I first downloaded Adobe Audition 3.0 and we're showing my favourite sound effects in there. But now earlier this year I started a new channel called Creative Magic and it's how can creators use AI in their process? And I count creators as everyone from someone working in a radio station trying to figure out how they can get these tools and use them to an individual podcaster with an idea in their bedroom or their living room. And they want to use AI in the best way possible. So I try to make the complex tools or I try to take the bunch of tools like it's like for image generation you could use mid journey or flux or how about this or stable diffusion? And I say, Well, how about this? Like this? I try to make it simple. That's my goal. So creative magic is the new thing. And yeah, I'm just weekly. I do updates on the best day tools for creators without overwhelming because there's this whole thing of like, you need to keep up, you need to keep up. It's moving so fast, you know, and it's like actually just find the good stuff that works for you and I guess rely on someone who's following it. So maybe that's me, but don't, don't stress. It's okay.

James Cridland: 7:46

I'm music radio creative. How how do we find out more about that?

Mike Russell: 7:50

Best places music radio creative dot com and if you need any help with voiceovers, jingles, music, anything at all. We even have a section on the website controversially you could say, doing a high voice overs as well. But obviously it is the future. So we want to embrace that and look forward and see how these tools can help augment us. But I did stress yesterday in my talk and here at the event, it's important to keep that human connection. It's important and it's important to connect with people and to be at events, because that's really what keeps us human until it's ready. Player one And we put the headsets on and you know, that's going to be a crazy new world, right?

James Cridland: 8:32

Mike, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate.

Mike Russell: 8:34

It. Thank you, James. Great to be here.