How to Cover Breaking News on the Radio | Radio.co

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How to Cover Breaking News on the Radio

Sound like you’re broadcasting live even when you’re not using voice tracking, the best way to cover breaking news on your radio station.

Laura Shenton

by Laura Shenton in Tips

Last updated 19.07.2024

This is a white man with brown hair and a brown closely shaven heard. He is talking into a white and red microphone. The background is neutral but appears to be a powerpoint. The borders of this image are purple.

Voice Tracking is a valuable tool for your radio station. If you need to get important information out about a crisis situation, it means you can get this out immediately and repeat it for your listeners without needing to be live yourself. It can also help with enabling your radio station to appear live 24/7, which can be pretty handy for your station if you’re planning on reaching a global audience across all timezones!

How Voice Tracking Works

Our Voice Tracking feature allows you to record short snippets of audio to insert into your radio shows to make them sound live. Most professional radio stations will have a host for each different show on the station, and they will pop up every now and then to segue between songs and perhaps give the listener a reminder of the time and what station they’re listening to.

Voice tracking gives you an easy way of doing this without actually needing to be live. Meaning you can get some well-earned rest, while your radio station carries on playing out your voice as if you’re still live!

How to Record Audio Using Voice Tracking

Image is a screenshot from the Radio.co dashboard, showing the voice tracking feature.

You can access Voice Tracking from your Radio.co account by heading to Media and then Voice Tracking. Then just select New Voice Track.

Image is a screenshot from the Radio.co dashboard showing the input device dropdown for voice tracking.

Click the red button on this pop up window and select your microphone from the drop down menu. Then, when you’re ready to record your audio, hit the red button again.

Note: You can record up to 10 mins per track.

Once you’re happy with your recording, give it a title and an artist. Then click the green Create button to add it to your Media library.

Image is a screenshot from the Radio.co dashboard showing the editing options for voice tracking.

Head to Media and Voice Tracking again to see your new file. If it needs a bit of editing, you can click on the three dots Action button, and then select Edit to open the clip in the Voice Editor. Here, you can move the cue points to adjust where the clip starts and ends, and move the fade in and fade out points to give you a smoother transition.

Image is a screenshot from the Radio.co dashboard showing voice tracked files.

Once you’re happy, click Save. Now you can drag this into any playlist you want it in, or you can add it to your Queue so it plays immediately after the song that’s playing on your station! It’s as easy as that!

Have you tried out our Voice Tracker yet? Let us know what you think of it in the comments below! If you have any more questions about this, or any of our other features, feel free to get in touch with us using the red speech bubble in the bottom right, or by emailing us at studio@radio.co.

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