Coestation Pioneers
the Possibilities of
“Voice×Entertainment.”
Avex and Toshiba Join
Forces for
Open Innovation

Avex and Toshiba Digital Solutions (TDSL) have cofounded a newly established enterprise known as Coestation. Launched in 2018 by Toshiba as an in-house business venture, the project has taken form as a new company in aims of accelerating even further. We sat down with Avex Group Executive / CEO & President of Coestation Inc. , Shinsuke Kato, and Coestation inc. Executive (seconded from Toshiba Digital Solutions Corporation), Yuuki Kaneko, to talk about their hopes for the project and the meaning behind this powerhouse tag team.

A platform for
voice synthesizing
technology.
A tag team between
“technicians” and
“content holders.”

Being able to control devices through built-in vocal interfaces has caught on fast in recent years, and markets related to voice synthesizing technology are expanding at a rapid pace. The need for this technology has risen in the entertainment industry, thus giving rise to the birth of Coestation. At the core of this new venture is the voice synthesizing skills that Toshiba has spent many long years honing. They started developing their voice platform Coestation in 2016 and officially launched it two years later in 2018.

Kaneko “Toshiba has been researching voice synthesizing technology over the past forty years and many of their members continue to develop that technology, one of their undeniable strengths, here at Coestation. Coestation [pronounced “koh-eh station”] is a platform-type service that allows users to create their own digital voice by reading aloud pre-composed sentences, which AI then learns to piece together personalized vocal data ready to use in a variety of ways.”

Toshiba’s ever-evolving technology creates natural sounding, emotionally rich voice that can be freely fine-tuned to sound like specific individual voices. The company is poised to make it a “cross-lingual” service in the near future as it incorporates other languages besides Japanese.

*At the moment Coestation accommodates eleven languages, providing monolingual services, e.g., Japanese to Japanese, or English to English. In the future it will be able to do Japanese to English, or Chinese, German, etc., showing potential for industries such as anime and film by allowing “as is” publishing of original content in foreign markets.

The coupling of Toshiba’s strength in technology and Avex’s strength as a content holder is what propels the business forward.

Kato “We often hear about two companies with different strengths coming together because they want to do something interesting with that synergy. But in reality there aren’t many examples of that working out to the point where they can create value as a single smooth running collaborative entity. In that respect, the important thing that really allowed us to get moving in the beginning was we had a surging clear cut image of how we could create new value and a new market by implementing our strengths.“

Seven billion voices:
the key to the future.
The growing
potential in entertainment.

It was Kaneko who first came up with the plan and concept for Coestation and even after joining teams with Avex, his initial concept and goals from the early stages have not changed. Amongst them, his final goal is to “gather the world’s seven billion voices.”

Kaneko “The “seven billion voices” thing isn’t a joke at all. I’m serious about it. As AI and IoT (Internet of Things) spread across the markets and our lives, it’s said that voice is going to be one of the next big things. People will be conversing more and more with AI as they go through their day and when that world becomes the norm, voice will be crucial. And when it is, they expect loads of chances to use a vast array of voices. So we’re building up the momentum to take on that future.”

Accelerating and expanding the possibilities in the entertainment realm is the strong point of Avex in the process of reaching Kaneko’s final goal for Coestation.

Kaneko “In fan club services, for example, there are chat bots that talk to fans in the voice of the artist or artists, right? And then you have voice being used at concert venues as a part of hospitality. As for industrial uses, we receive lots of offers for hospitality and customer service. By tag teaming with Avex we are sure to add more elements of entertainment in there and, say, use the voices of different famous TV personalities for hospitality and customer service. I think we’ll see more and more attempts to tie entertainment into areas that entertainment hasn’t existed previously.

Kato “There are other ideas too, such as creating audio books recorded in the “voice” of the author. And even the news, up until now it’s just been people reading texts, but with this we could have the news read in the voice of our favorite TV personality and listen to that as we commute to work every morning. The types of collaborative ideas are endless.”

Kaneko “We started collaborating with The Asahi Shimbun Newspaper to do an experiment. They have an app called Asahi Arukiki that reads the news for its users and one piece of feedback that they often receive is that users want to be able to listen to the news in a voice they like. Of course Asahi tried increasing their variation of voice through the usual recording process, but the more they recorded the more it cost. And it simply wouldn’t be realistic to get a popular personality to read the news every day. So we tried doing it with Coestation. Maybe there are some young people out there that aren’t interested in the news now, but if they could listen to it in the voice of their favorite entertainer then it might spark their interest.”

Putting new value
into voice.
Taking on the world
with an open mind.

When talking about the interesting part of Avex and TDSL pairing up like this, Kato mentioned two key words; open innovation between major corporations and collaboration.

Kato “Major corporations in Japan are going through a change now and a lot of attention is being focused on the innovation coming out of those major companies. It’s important for startups to innovate in their own unique way and for them to collaborate with major corporations like us, but I think the main premise for this Coestation project lies in the sheer intrigue that two companies with long solid career records are joining forces to bring new value to the game.”

As you can tell by now, this project aims to stir things up in the voice world. Not only will this affect the entertainment industry, but it will positively affect the artists and personalities in it as well.

Kato “We are a team of venture business guys and investors, so of course the most important premise for Coestation is the value we create and the intrigue as a business. I think the meaning of us working on this project is to make completely new value for our industries by working together. And successfully setting a new example as a business with this team is bound to be very valuable to both Avex and to Toshiba.”

Kaneko “Looking forward, and this is with regards to increasing capital as well, but we’re looking for new partners as well, and we want to get out into the world not only as fast as possible but with a well-established team of all-around Japanese partners. Of course we don’t only plan to put the artists and talents at Avex on our voice lineup, we hope to explain the value this project possesses to potential partners and have them leap beyond the common boundaries of their industry and join us to make a wide ranged team. In that respect it’s wonderful that we were able to work with Avex first.”

Kato went on to speak about his hopes for Coestation beyond the entertainment world.

Kato “Coestation can also be implemented as a communication tool for families living apart or for people who have lost their voice to illness. Incorporating elements of entertainment will be imperative when making voice synthesizing technology a common thing in society so pairing with the entertainment industry like this should prove to make a much greater impact than the technology would alone. In the end, growing this project far past the world of entertainment is very attractive from both a scalability point of view and for building promise.”

At the end of the interview the two had this to say about each other; “We wouldn’t have been able to get into this new realm if it weren’t for Kaneko-san,” and “Kato-san and I are 100% on the same page vision-wise and I’m positive it will be a good run together.” From these two comments we can tell that at the heart of Coestation, what holds this tag team together is the resonance and empathy they have for others, a factor that is symbolized in their interest in voice identity, as opposed to voice quality. The open-mindedness of Avex and Toshiba are sure to carry the potential of Coestation to the max.