4 Live Announcement Software In 2024
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From schools and banks to shopping malls and railway stations, announcement software are used for communication as well as multimedia purposes like playing music and advertisements at public and private spaces.
Announcements software are also used to announce workings and closing hours, playing background music as well as promotional offers in shopping malls. Casinos and Hotels use the software to make announcements to different areas within the building including emergency evacuation announcement.
Other businesses that use announcement software are banks for announcing ticket number, Supermarkets for promotional messages and paging as well as large retail stores use it for particular zoning department to summon employees and customers and as an effective way of communication.
The announcement system is not only made of an announcement software but also requires (depending on the business type) LED displays to show information related to promotional media and audio system for the verbal announcement as well as text to speech to make the multi-lingual announcement.
However, today, in this article, we will be focusing on the best announcement software that allows you to automatically mix music, add promotional audio along with live announcement capabilities.
What to expect from an effective announcement software?
Depending on the type of business, an announcement software should offer the following features:
- An intuitive user interface which less tech-savvy users can understand
- Automated and live announcement features
- Support for third-party apps like cloud-based music services with continues playback
- Text-to-speech with multi-lingual support
- Announcement schedule feature
- Multiple zone/area support
Best announcement software for PC
BMS Music and Announcement Player
- Price – starts at $249
BMS Music and Announcement Player is an announcement software from NCH Software that allows you to play background music, advertisements and make live announcements.
The software comes with a simple user interface that can be learned to use in a single session. All the essential controls are provided on the main page. You can load music and announcement audio files to the player and tweak the settings for announcement and music from their respective control tabs.
The music control settings allow you to schedule playing date and expiry date. You can also tweak settings for Cue in and Out. The same settings are also available for the Announcement control panel.
The General options tab allows you to enable the automatic-run player, set password lock for settings, ability to reset sound card with the schedule, restart the computer with schedule and auto delete BMS item based on expiry date and added date.
You can further manage master volume control, convert audio files to MP3, tweak settings for Digital Signal Processor that includes Dynamic Range compressor and Multiband Active EQ for adjusting Bass and Treble.
The Music and Announcement tab allow you to autoplay announcement at random interval, set microphone paging and also autoplay random music tracks. Moving on to Zone options, you will be able to select a pair of zones (up to 16 zones) for the live announcement along with the sound device for the selected zone.
For live announcements, you need to download the IAPremote software offered by NCH software. Other features supported by the BMS Music and Announcement software include an audio compressor, support for online music subscriptions, automatic fade between tracks, text-to-speech Voice Synthesis and the ability to network with other computers.
BMS Music and Announcement software is a professional tool that is loaded with feature yet simple to use. You can download the trial version of the software from the link below.
storePlay
- Price – Starts at $35
StorePlay is not your traditional announcement software but targeted at businesses like retail stores, saloons, and cafe that needs background music solution that can play promotional advertisement at regular interval. It can also be used at shopping malls.
StorePlay plans start at $35 per month and offer identical features across all the plan except for the availability of songs that differs from plan to plan.
StorePlay allows you to play top music tracks legally in retail stores and other business and covers all the royalties on music tracks on behalf of the customer.
The music can be customized based on the business type and mode. You can manage your music remotely via the storePlay website. As of now, the scheduling is future is unavailable but said to be coming soon.
Apart from downloading music, you can also upload your own messages like announcements and promotional messages.
storePlay updates music library every week offering fresh tracks all the time. There is a storePlay app if you want to control music from your smartphone as well.
Owners can manage all the settings from the centralized device dashboard which includes sound leveling and crossfading settings as well as the option to add promotions and messages.
storePlay makes it easy for store owners and businesses to play background music legally without having to purchase the music for commercial use.
— Editor’s Note: If you’re interested in other audio software, check out our wide collection of guides.
Sound Mill
- Price – Free 30 days complete trial / Basic edition $29.95 / Ultimate Edition $89.95
Sound Mill is a feature-rich music play and announcement software that can be used in business and public venues, for stand-up performances like magic shows and in art theaters.
The software allows you to play multiple audio files simultaneously for theater production with precise control over which track plays at which time.
For retailer stores and shopping malls, the software can be used to play music playlist in the pipe with a recorded announcement like sales promotion and upcoming events at a regular interval. You can schedule pre-recorded message like store closing time announcement, and Sound Mill will play the message at a scheduled time.
For malls that have multiple stores, Sound Mill offers Zone option which allows you to program audio playlist for each zone from a single computer.
Sound Mills supports all the major audio formats including MIDI, WMA, AU, AIFF, MP4, AVI and more. You can add support for more formats by installing a third-party codec to play popular formats like OGG, AAC, FLAC, etc.
Sound Mill works with touch-enabled devices, Wireless Bluetooth speakers and offers smartphone-based wireless control. Other features Sound Mill software offers include Eight band equalizer, DSP effect, IPC integration, business announcement feature, and scheduler.
The user interface is simple, but the software comes with so many features that it would take a couple of days to learn nuts and bolts of using Sound Mill.
Download Sound Mill
StationPlaylist Creator
- Price – Starts at $65
Creator is a music and sports scheduling software that allows you to schedule music and announcement for any hour of the day. Creator comes with far more music control features than any other music and announcement software in the segment.
One of the interesting features is that the Creator can prevent the user from scheduling multiple songs of the same tempo unless intentionally done. You can schedule different genres of music for a whole day.
The Creator program does not work on its own but requires an external music player to play the music. While the developers recommend Studio tool ( from the same developers) which is expensive and needs to be bought separately, Creator works smoothly with free players such as Winamp and Windows Media Player.
Creator software comes in multiple version. The base version Creator Lite costs $65 with some features disabled, and the Pro version costs $259 with all the features enabled.
Download StationPlaylist Creator
Good Music in a retail store is said to be one of the key factors influencing the customers to make purchases, recommend the store to their friends and family and spend more time shopping. It is also one of the cool ways to differentiate your brand from others.
Playing music in stores creates the right atmosphere by masking unwanted noise, which gives a sense of private space and results in less annoyed customers because the customer won’t pay much attention to the time. It can also help your employees and keep them in a good mood despite working for hours in the store.
With our recommendations of the best software for an automated announcement in store and private spaces, you can positively impact your customer and staff.
Do let us know your favorite software in the comments below. As for this year’s CES, it was full of surprises from Microsoft, Samsung, Intel, HP, Dell, Lenovo, and not only. Just take a closer look at our dedicated article.
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