AI is reshaping radio—but not in the way many fear.

Joel Denver, Co-Founder and CEO of SonicTrek.ai, joins BRANDwidth on Demand to explain what actually changes when AI enters broadcasting, what doesn’t, and why indecision—not innovation—is the real risk. A practical conversation on AI-infused radio, local relevance, human judgment, and the future of audio.

Essential listening for anyone shaping the future of radio, podcasts, and audio-first media.

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How can you localize your station? You can't right now. You don't have the tools to do that right now. Localized content is what matters. Localized music is also what matters.

And those are the two building blocks, I believe, for increased revenue opportunities and increased ratings opportunities.

BRANDwidth on Demand Rebooting radio with a different take on all radio can be.

There's so many stations in so many markets that have great signals and they're like rate getter stations. They just throw extra spots on there. Well, instead of just being a rate getter, how about being a profit center?

Now your guides through the mediamorphosis, David Martin and author of the book BRANDwidth Media Branding coach Kipper McGee.

Our guest has been shaping how radio sounds and how it talks about itself well for decades.

Here's a guy who started out was a phenomenal dj, an air talent right up there with all the big guys, but then went on to program and program very well radio stations in big markets like San Diego and Miami.

But that was only the very beginning of the guy's career because then he went on to become really the voice nationally and internationally of the top 40 format for radio on records. Yeah, it was a dead tree publication back in the day where he stood taller than anyone standing up for top 40. He did a great job with it.

Then went to found AllAccess.com, really the first.com daily industry publication which became the meeting place for radio and music pros long before social media was even a thing. Well, after moving on, he decided to reinvent himself yet again. And today he's partner and CEO of Sonic Trek AI.

He's teamed up with innovators like Mike Agavino and Lee Abrams to fuse human creativity with AI smarts and reinvent what radio sounds like in the future. So before All Access, yeah. DJ programmer. After All Access, well, he's onto something brand new again that can help all of us.

We welcome the one and only Joel Denver. Hey, Joel.

Hey. Welcome guys. Thank you, Kipper. Thank you, Dave. It's a real pleasure to be here. And I'm here.

I appreciate the opportunity to, you know, spread the word a little bit about our little company here that we're kicking off and we're excited about, about having people aboard and to learn more about what we can do for you to fix what's going on at radio. That's, that's really the big, the big thing here.

It's sounds like, I mean, you guys have gone from chronicling radio's evolution with All Access to now you're engineering it, you're making it happen with Sonic Track. So we're. What made you decide for this next chapter you want to be a hands on innovator instead of an observator?

That's funny. Well, yeah, you know, it was just I.

There's a guy named Jimmy Risk out of Detroit at the time, and he and I were friends for years and he just called me one day to talk about a few things that, you know, he said, well, I blew up my computer by accident and I lost all my emails and stuff like that. So he asked me for a few emails and this and that.

And about a week into that, you know, he finally said to me, he said, look, he says, would you like to come aboard and be part of this? And I went, sure. And we discussed it and I came aboard as president and general manager and I got to work immediately.

At that point we had one format up, it was Phoebe Curiously Alternative, which is a female leaning alternative station. That's the difference out there.

All of our stations are slightly different from what you can get and in some ways radically what you can get on the airwaves today. So that's one of the things that we think is a positive.

So Dennis Constantine, who was an old friend of mine from the Washington D.C. area where he and I both kind of grew up, he, he came aboard and he was elevated to director of programming. And then Lee Abrams came aboard. We started talking about what he would like to do. And Lee says, I'd love to do a classic rock format.

And we bandied about a bunch of names and this and that and the other, and that's exactly what happened. So we called it Starship.

We hired a guy named Jax, Paul Jackson, but we decided to call him Zachs instead of Jax because it was a little clued close to Jack fm. And so, and he's our host for that show. And it's really a reimagined version of classic hits. It's not the same 200, 225 titles you hear.

This goes back into the 70s for some of the biggest songs. A lot of oh wow cuts that you haven't heard a long, in a long, long time. We have a British girl who's imaging the show. It's pretty unique sounding.

And then, you know, we picked up Charlie Cook.

And Charlie Cook was infamous for his terrific, huge, huge reputation for his time at Cumulus Radio, plus a lot of other radio stations as well too, before that. And he left Cumulus and he was sort of, he was He's a neighbor of mine, kind of like about 20 minutes up the road.

We had some lunch in about 20 minutes. We said we had a deal. He says, why wouldn't I want to do this? And he brought us Suzanne Alexander.

She hosts a TV show and radio show, RFD TV, and she's got an audience of some 20 million people a week, which is fantastic. So she's a big name in Nashville. And then I hired Brian Kelly. He wanted to do the classic hits format, which we call cool Classics.

And we hired Randy west, who's a renowned broadcaster herself and programming. And she just has got a terrific reputation in the voicing formats and such. And so she's aboard doing that.

So that's kind of how it all comes together for us, you know, and there it is.

And I've got just a great team with Denison, programming director of our programming, and Mike Agavino, who is our chief revenue Officer, and Gary DeRosa, who was part of the company when I joined the company, and Gary is our chief financial officer.

So what a lineup. What a lineup.

We have four formats right now, and the thing that we believe we are introducing to radio is a different way of doing radio.

You know, radio has gone through so many cuts and so many downsizings, and the most important thing that's, I think, has been lost in radio is the fact that it's the same 200 songs that are tested that nobody doesn't hate. We don't know how passionate they are for them, but they don't hate these songs.

Right.

You know, and so they don't.

They don't suck.

They don't suck. But we're going to find, in each market, we're going to localize the music for every market that we're in and find the oh, wow.

Songs that were relevant to those marketplaces. And that's the spice that we're going to add to the stew.

And we're also too, we have the ability, through our partners at Futuri Media, our buddy Daniel Anstanigan team, and they have technology that allows for our AI hosts to.

In the moment, as soon as something happens in the marketplace, it's of a bit, sadly, of a crisis or a weather nature, that host can start talking about the storms that are coming, where to get help, where to get aid. Here's the number for fema, all of that stuff. It doesn't turn us into a news station, but the.

The content leans towards that if there is nothing like that happening, and we hope that that doesn't happen. It's happened too far too often lately. But they will talk about the concerts that are in town in Nashville.

There's just a plethora of entertainment comments that could be there, all the formats.

I mean, a lot of times some of these older artists, you know, release new things they can talk about, you know, collections that are coming back out again. They can recall big concerts where some like the who and so and so was at such a concert where the Beatles played such and such.

The Moody Blues are on and on and on.

And they're going to pull local content that's designed exactly for those particular marketplaces and talk about what's happening socially, what's happening event wise, what's fam. What. What are family things to talk about?

And those are the things, the localized music and the localized comment and content of these air personalities that's missing. That's why radio is losing, losing ground out there. It's the same songs. There's no local content.

I mean, in many markets it's just a morning show and then the rest of the day parts, seven days a week are all voice tracked. And those voice tracks are three days, five days, six days in front. And there's nothing that they can react to in the moment.

We can offer that to radio.

Well, Joe, for brand managers and content managers who see AI as this big pink slip instead of a power tool, what's the smartest way to start turning that fear into leverage for those guys?

Well, it's just basically to take the 30,000 foot view we have of what I just described and gay listen, how can you localize your station? You can't right now. You don't have the tools to do that right now. Localized content is what matters. Localized music is also what matters.

And those are the two building blocks, I believe, for increased revenue opportunities and increased ratings opportunities. There's so many stations in so many markets that have great signals and they're like rate getter stations. They just throw extra spots on there.

Well, instead of just being a rate getter, how about being a profit center? And those are the ideas that we have that we think can apply to many, many outlets in America.

And in fact, in many of those cases, you're not seeing people go because they've already. There's almost no staff at those stations to begin with.

Right?

So using the cloned voices and the localized content that you're describing, how does Sonictrack really preserve that kind of feeling of a human spark and the personality element that you were so good at doing and the kind of thing that makes radio really feel alive.

Well, we've worked very, very hard and we've developed some proprietary tools along with our friends at Futuri and they make these tools, make these real voices that were put into the system. They sound human, they don't sound like AI.

Yeah, I mean, if you listen to the demo, it's like amazing what they are doing.

Yeah, all you got to do is listen, I think listening.

And here we have two streams that are live now we have Phoebe and we just put Starship up there and anybody can hear the other, the other Scope demos, plus Those streams at SonicTrek AI, it's a site up there. You can download the deck and we're happy to chat with you and explain things, things, anything you don't understand.

But by the way, we've got links to those also in the show notes here.

Oh, thank you. Thank you. So it's really an exciting time and it's fun.

I've always enjoyed a challenge and this is fun to be able to like win people over and make sure they understand this and that they feel comfortable about doing something like this.

I mean, it's a radical departure from what has been happening, but we see the headlines every day and it's not good financially for radio out there doing the same thing. It's time to come to do something different because if you do it the same way over and over and over again, you're going to get the same results.

We believe this is a feasible opportunity for radio to re localize itself, put personality back on there and have an expanded playlist. Not a drastically expanded playlist, but enough that they get a little flavor, they get a little oh, wow. Factor in.

Audiences now can go to any of the streaming DSPs, the platforms up there, and hear a wide variety of music. So radio sounds particularly boring to them right now in terms of music content.

What a ride. Kipper, always great catching up with Joel Denver and seeing how he's still pushing the boundaries of what's possible. He's an amazing guy. Yeah.

If you've got thoughts on Joel's take or maybe a guest or topic you'd like us to explore next, just drop us a note show brandwithondemand.com or you can connect on social bran with plus on insta, Facebook or X. That's BRANDwidthplus.

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Coming up next, Joel gives us some non techy thoughts.

Here at Musicmaster. We can help with a lot of things because we've heard a lot of things. Have you ever heard this? Of course you have. It's dead air. Or how about this? Because you loved me. Yeesh.

What's known as the train wreck segue. Or maybe your PD just heard two of the same artists back to back and it's not even Tuesday.

At Musicmaster, we know a thing or two because, well, we've heard a thing or two. We are Musicmaster. Perfect. The sound of your radio station today. Check out musicmaster.com your station played out.

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BRANDwidth On Demand,

we're talking with Joel Denver. He is CEO and co founder of Sonic Trek AI, the world's first totally AI radio format company.

Joel, taking a break from all the things tech for a second. What's the one thing that you know now that you wish you'd known way back when?

I wish I'd known how consolidation was going to hurt business as it has. If I had known that, I might have tried to do something like this before now.

But I think it's kind of a that would have been maybe getting the cart before the horse because the tools for AI and making these voices sound human instead of some robotic play along kind of a thing. They weren't actually here until just recently.

I mean, we've been working on this, Dennis and I and the whole team, we've been working on this for like months, I mean, 15, 16 months to try and get these voices right, to get everything in line that we needed to get in line. And it's kind of like it was a right place, right time is now. But it's really interesting.

I don't think anybody had any real ideas about what consolidation would have done to our business and the success of the platforms.

But I really, truly believe that listeners are a they're not interested in just listening to the same 200 songs over and over again and they're not getting any content from local radio as a rule.

And if they have to sacrifice that, they'd rather go somewhere to some big streaming network and be Able to hear anything they want to, you know, pick songs, they want to build their own playlist, they want to. But the research says over and over again that what makes radio happen is local content and localized music.

And that's just not happening in too many places anymore. We believe with this technology we can make radio stations that are not doing well on ratings and revenue.

We can make them very successful and that makes radio shine as a whole. I think all boats rise when they're success stories and that's what we're looking to do.

So looking ahead, what traits or instincts will define the future Proof Audio Pro? In other words, the ones who stay indispensable no matter how smart the tech gets and how dumb we stay.

That's an interesting question. I think people that can show their personalities demonstrate the ability to localized content on their shows. Those are the people that stand out.

Those are the people that, you know, will have jobs. Those are the people that will continue to be employed and valued as talent. You know, sadly, it's just that radio chopped at those two areas.

There research for music is almost non existent anymore. So they rely on some research company to design them up uneventful but Safe Place playlist.

And they've chopped really great talent because they can't afford the price tag. So it's kind of like we're almost at a fork in the road here.

And with the recent news from some of these absolutely great radio companies having so much trouble raising revenue and keeping things steady without declines in the balance books and stock shares and all that stuff like that, it's a challenging time. And we really believe that we offer something that can make a difference for radio stations.

And it's going to take some people with some adventure, it's going to take some people that, you know, can see beyond what they're currently doing and try something different.

Perfect.

If we always do what we always have done, we will always get what we are getting because we won't get what we have always gotten because it ain't there anymore.

Exactly right. It's exactly right. It's the same in, same in, same out. And you're going to get the same result. You have to do something to change it up.

And I think we offer a really solid and well backed presentation and idea and concept that really will make a difference for radio stations.

Yeah. Thank you, Joel. Our thanks to the very insightful pioneer, Joel Denver.

We have links to SonicTrek AI including a full explanation deck format list links and more all in the show notes. Just scroll down on your phone.

Our thanks to exec producer Cindy Huber for humanly putting this all together. And of course, Hannah B, our associate producer for booking. And coming up next, Hi, this is.

Sean Ross of the Ross on Radio column and Advantage Music Research. I always like to talk about trends in music and program. I like to talk about what I'm seeing research.

And we'll do that next time on Brad with On Demand.

That's a wrap. Kipper, what can the daughter of a writer teach us about getting better at what we do every day? Well, that's the topic in the next One Minute Martinizing.. Find it in the show notes at brandwithondemand.com I'm Dave Martin.

And I'm Kipper McGee. May all your BRANDwidth be wise.