Financial considerations

The cost to produce a radio advert can vary as there is no set price for an advert, the general cost of advertising is around £2 for every 1000 listeners so the most listeners the most expensive the costs, also the the cost increases by the amount of times the ad is played on the radio and at what time it is played, many adverts are around 30 seconds long so the shorter that ad the lower the price. 

Here is a rate card telling you a few prices for different times of the day.

When it comes to choosing a station to air your advert on you much choose the one which is aimed at your desired target audience rather than the ones with most listeners, if popular songs are required on the advert the the cost can increase by  £25.000 just in licensing fees.

Key 103 is the most popular radio station in Manchester, and for 30 x 80 second commercials it will cost you about £3,500, key 103 will also produce you advert for you.

Here is how many times your advert may be aired over a week on Key 103 and magic 1152.

music

when It come to choosing music for radio adverts is that you cannot use and music that is copyrighted, therefore permission is required to use the majority of popular songs, the music chosen for that adverts music is important as in all radio ads as it creates the desired mood for that adverts and keeps the listeners interested. In any radio ad the most emery able part is the music as this is what make you instantly recognise the advert and also helps set the mood for the ad.

Here are some things you must consider when choosing music for a radio ad:

Fair use – fair use is copyright meaning it is illegal for you to use music that can be recognized and you do not have permission by the artist.

Licensing – licencing is where if you wish to use a particular song, you require two different licences to do this one is from the owner of the music themselves and the other is from the owner of the copyright recording.

The 7 second rule – this is where when using a song you may only use 7 seconds of it, this however does not exist and you are still breaching the copyright law.

Strategies – this is getting the licences required to play a song without breaching copyright this however can be expensive.

For my college work we have 2 libraries of music and sound effects which we can use copyright free as there is no copyright protection on them.

Production roles:

 

A creative producer is basically the Director they speak to clients and to find out what production budget they have, what there target audience is and ask the client what is to said in the advert and what music or jingles are used, they also over see most of the production that goes on.

A copywriter is required to write all the scripts for radio commercials, they're job is to make sure the script they write keeps the audiences attention, some copywriters may have a background in script writing and sometimes they  are both copywriter and producer.

A voiceover artist is required to use their voice and read the script which they are given, the voice over artist will usually be trained as radio adverts require someone with a clear voice in order to keep the audience’s attention,in some adverts like the go compare on  a session vocalist is required to do the singing parts of the advert.

A recording engineer is required to record music speech and make sound effects for radio adverts, they are must be able to use different electronic equipment and be able to produce high quality radio adverts. 

http://www.thevoiceovergallery.co.uk/ Here a link to a well-known voice-over company that is based in Manchester.

Production facilities

   When producing a radio commercial there are many different things which you will need such as the production facilities that you will need to produce a professional commercial radio advert, you can make these within a radio studio as they have the facilities you will need such as a soundboard, a soundproof voice booth, editing workstations/software such as reaper or adobe audition Independent radio companies such as SPmedia or Spot Works  have these and so do we as we have our own small radio studio in college which has similar facilities. 

Here is a picture of an isolation booth which is a small soundproofed room which keeps and outside noise out which helps when recording as there would be no background noise.

Here Is a picture of a soundboard this is used to for the recording and editing of digital audio, this also can be used with software’s such as reaper or adobe audition.

 In college we have the software reaper which allows us to do multitrack recording and editing to a professional standard, it also works with almost every hardware available, we use this because it is free to download easy to use and allows you to make simple dad but if you want something more professional you would be better off with audacity or ad

Done audition.

  Audacity is a free, easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. The interface is translated into many languages. You can use Audacity to:

• Record live audio.
• Record computer playback on any Windows Vista or later machine.
• Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
• Edit WAV, AIFF, FLAC, MP2, MP3 or Ogg Vorbis sound files.
• AC3, M4A/M4R (AAC), WMA and other formats supported using optional libraries.
• Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
• Numerous effects including change the speed or pitch of a recording.
• And more! See the complete list of features.

Adobe Audition is a digital audio workstation from Adobe Systems featuring both a multitrack, non-destructive mix/edit environment and a destructive-approach waveform editing view. Adobe Audition has many different features such as:  

- Sound Remover 
- Enchanted Spectral Display 
- Advanced Sound Design
- Preview Editor
- Round trip Editing Workflow 
- Audio Finesse
- Enhanced Multitrack Editing
- ITU Loudness Metering
- Automatic Speech Alignment