From the "CURRENT SITE" dropdown, select a site with Messaging enabled, and you should see the Messaging icon in the sidebar. Click it to get started.

At minimum, assets and schedules will be required to deploy your messaging.

Now with the latest text-to-speech functions you can create your own audio messages directly inside the Messaging app and even underlay a jingle-style music bed with intros and outros that will dynamically adapt to the length of your content.

Click "Get Started" at the top of the Assets page:

Give your asset a name. Consistent naming is essential for management of large asset libraries. A good scheme for this is to use keywords from least to most specific, no spaces, separated by a delimiter such as underscore or hyphen:

2025_Q2_specialOffers_theRegion_theProduct

Create a script using normal conversational punctuation. Spacing and paragraphs will further help convey the desired delivery. For longer scripts, consider authoring this in a text editor ahead of time.

Choose a voice from the following options. It is possible to create scripts in languages other than English.

Click "Generate" and wait a moment. A play button will appear. Click this to preview the message. The generation is non-deterministic, meaning that generating again will produce a slightly different result. Based on the result you may want to make some adjustments to the script and generate again to test the output.

There is no "undo" function. Regenerating files will destructively overwrite a previous generation. If you aren't sure you want to abandon the current generation, save the current asset and create a new one with the same script.

Setting to and from dates on an asset allows it to be post-dated for future playback, and/or expired on a certain day.

This means that assets can be included in a playlist but set as inactive outside specific date ranges, allowing for detailed time ranges without the need to manually adjust the playlist on those days. For example, create a playlist with 12 monthly messages where each asset has a valid range for its own individual month. The playlist will change to reflect the valid message for that month without the need to make edits throughout the year.

When the desired audio output has been achieved, click the "Create Asset" button to add this message to your library.

Have your own audio files already produced? Use these steps to upload them to the assets library. Common file types are accepted up to 20MB:

Click the pencil to edit an asset name or its valid dates. Setting to and from dates on an asset allows it to be post-dated for future playback, and/or expired on a certain day.

This means that assets can be included in a playlist but set as inactive outside specific date ranges, allowing for detailed time ranges without the need to manually adjust the playlist on those days. For example, create a playlist with 12 monthly messages where each asset has a valid range for its own individual month. The playlist will change to reflect the valid message for that month without the need to make edits throughout the year.

Playlists allow for a rotating series of messages to play in cycles between (or instead of) your background music. These can be queued at intervals or launched at exact times.

Create a playlist by clicking the item in the sidebar. Give it a descriptive name. Click "Add Assets" and check the assets to include. You have the option of adding more than one instance of any asset. This is helpful when you want to hear certain assets more frequently than others in a single rotation.

Click "Add Assets" and you'll now see a window where they can be reordered by dragging from the handle at the left of the boxes. In this example you can see how we'll be hearing ad2 more frequently in each rotation.

Continue to add assets as necessary or click "Create Playlist" to save and return to the Playlists table.

The Playlists table works similarly to the Assets table and others in the system. Filter, sort, delete, bulk delete, and edit tools are available.

Schedules are what play your assets. A simple schedule can be made in seconds with a few clicks, but complex setups are possible using the timing options.

Under the Schedules menu in the sidebar, click "Create schedule" to get started.

Intros and Outros are a programmatic way to add a start and end to your messages without having to record these into each asset individually.

For example, you have a promotional offer script that always uses the same starting lines, but then adjusts to the specifics of the offer. Instead of recording the extra lines you can create them in a separate message and add them as an intro at the level of the schedule.

Click "Include intro" and select which message to use

It's possible for your schedule to contain only a single asset. Click "A Single asset" button and select from your available assets. This message will play at every selected interval/time.

In most cases though, you'll have a group of messages that will rotate through a playlist you created above. Select "A playlist" and click the "Add playlists" button.

By default the start and end will be immediately/never/all day and once you hit save the playback begins and runs until the schedule is removed. But it's possible to make your start times in the future by selecting them, and/or set an expiration date by selecting a specific end.

Custom times allow you to limit to only certain days of the week and/or narrower ranges of times on certain days. Note that only one time range per day of the week is available. If you need to run a schedule again at a second time range on the same day of the week you'll need to do this with a separate schedule.

Not all audio files are rendered equally loud. It's not a bad idea to "normalize" your files before importing them, but even so you may find that they have a noticeable volume discrepancy with the surrounding background music. If this happens you have the option here, per schedule, to raise or lower the messages' volume compared to the music volume.

Music Beds turn your message into a jingle-style radio ad with embedded music underlaid.

Preview the different music options with the play buttons on the right. Select one with the radio buttons on the left.

At message time the system will automatically play the music intro, the message (including intro/outro messages) with an underlying music bed, and the outro music timed to the message conclusion.

Finally, give your schedule a descriptive name and hit Save. You will be redirected to the Schedules table, which contains similar tools to the other messaging page tables.

If you have more than one site that will play these messages it's likely you will need to use the copy feature to deploy these settings across the multiple destination sites. In cases where you need different content or settings for different sites, you'll need to set these up on different "source" sites and then copy them separately to their separate destinations. Selecting those destinations correctly is aided by the use of tags (see below).

For any copies that are uniform - one source to all destinations - you can simply "Select All" as shown here. Or if you choose not to use the tags you can just use the Search field like you would any of the other filters in the system to make quick filtered groups and easily make selections for your copy destinations. Note that the Search field only works with site names and Startle's JUKE ID numbers. Filtering by tags is done with the Filter Tags button.

See the STUDIO guide for help with tags

Once your tags are applied you can simplify your selection of copy destination sites by filtering according to the tags. Click the Filter Tags button to add tags to the filter list. Destination sites will then be filtered with an AND operation which multiplies these filters. In other words only sites which match ALL the shown filters are displayed in the list. This should simplify the process of refining the list of destinations according to the content you're deploying prior to running the copy.

Once the correct filters are applied, click the Select All button.

A warning appears along with a detailed list of exactly what the copy operation is going to perform.

Once the operation begins, further copies to these sites will be blocked until this operation completes.

Destination hardware players will then start receiving their new instructions shortly after and begin downloading new files as necessary. In most cases you will begin hearing this new content within 20-30 minutes of hitting the copy button (taking into account a potentially large copy operation, communications to the hardware, and file download times to the hardware). But keep in mind your frequency settings may cause them to play much later.