The matching Voice – Meet Benztown’s Don Amiche or you…

There are radio formats, which are more relying on credibilty and realness than others. We here at Benztown had to discover that, when we were launching our Urban library. Technically seen our library was awesome: great beats and beds, nice brandings, promos and sweepers, fat loops, great amount of new pieces each week and and and……A lot of stations turned us down at the beginning and we couldn’t understand, because the product seemed to be perfect. It seemed….One Day  I was speaking to a close friend of mine about picking up our Urban Library for his station and he told me:”Andy, the product is great and I love the pieces, when I logIn to the site, but no matter how great and fat it sounds, the guy who is voicing it, is not a black guy”! “Sure thing he isn’t, but who cares”? I answered, “you will change the VO any way”. What I got a day later, my buddy (a black guy) felt something was not right and sounded fake, even if the library was set up well. I was angry about myself, because if anyone would have asked me to pick a voice for an urban station playing Rap, Hip Hop and R’n’B I would have recommended a black guy, but for my own library I was thinking the guys will change it anyway, so who cares….I forgot to influence the influencers! I was stumbled over my own law after I picked hundreds of VO guys for my stations and clients :

Realness and credibility start  with the fact you hear first and in almost any Imaging piece. The VO guy.

My analysis was easy – problems of a white guy doing an Urban Radio Station:

1.No urban station wants to have “Whitey White Man” to voice their contest promo, music sellings or else (even it is to be changed later, because it is brought to them through an imaging service).

2.No mainly black audience wants to have “Whitey” crank through their speakers right after the last Keith Sweat song.

3.Digging into target matching language is tough, if you are not a target. Only a few great writers can address almost any target without being one.

Solution:

Don Amiche….

Check his bio and demo here + check out the best urban pieces of last week…

[soundcloud width=”100%” height=”81″ params=”” url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/10597558″] Benztown Urban Overview by Benztown Branding Blog

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