Helpdesk Earth

Skuldwyrm202627 tracks1 hour 57 minutes

Helpdesk Earth is a soundtrack of sorts for the book Helpdesk Earth.

An earlier attempt at a AI-voiced audiobook used deliberately connected music with a strong, specific theme rather than unrelated generated songs. That cohesion can be heard across the tracks, which originally played beneath the entire audiobook. I considered adding sound effects and turning it into a full audio play.

While researching sound-effect generation and audiobook publishing, I found the current ecosystem small and tightly constrained. To publish the audiobook under strict specifications for AI-assisted audiobook content, I had to rebuild the narration from scratch with specific services. Their pipeline required narration using their AI tools, so I could not supply the original audio. The initial soundtrack therefore no longer fitted the new audiobook. The planned audio play was set aside, although the rebuilt audiobook narration improved considerably.

But I did not want to throw all that effort or money away. This album preserves the original full-length tracks made for that audio play, alongside the new audiobook theme and interlude, unused material from the audiobook remake, and the complete new audiobook itself (yeah you read that right).

It is intentionally a large release: the audiobook runs a little over an hour and the music runs a little under an hour. It is a way to give listeners substantial value and to preserve the work of this unique AI-and-human collaborative book release, since it faces such limited distribution. The album includes a vocal track featuring Raphaelle, the story's main character (a music video will be released too), there is also an instrumental version and extracted vocals for listeners interested in karaoke or remixing.