J. Michael Collins

 

So. Much. Fear.

That’s the nature of new technology. Whenever “the next big thing” becomes part of the zeitgeist, the world seems to explode with opportunists, hype monsters, and those who are terrified that “this will change everything,” or want to make a buck off of that fear.

The voiceover industry is resilient and defiant, and it has been through change after change. 9/11 and the associated economic downturn barely dented the industry. The rise of the P2Ps changed the way many work, but have hardly been apocalyptic. The financial crisis of 2008, the worst since the Great Depression, slowed things down by a small margin for a year or so….then they picked right back up. The rise of micro-budget platforms like Fiverr also failed to cause the cataclysm. Today, the fear is that AI voices will replace human voice actors…..and if you live on VO social media, that fear is EVERYWHERE.

Here are a couple of stories and some journalistic insight to help you sleep better, oh fellow mic jockeys.

A few weeks ago I was hired to voice a submission for the recent Cannes Film Festival, one of the film industry’s signature annual events.

As often happens, the client sent over the video I would be narrating prior to the directed session. This video contained a scratch track. A scratch track that used an AI voice. And, honestly, a pretty good one. It probably could have sufficed for the final, if I’m being candid. Not an exceptional VO, but a reasonably competent one that a layman might believe was a real person.

I have strong faith that most sophisticated creatives…..people who aren’t working on tight margins and beholden to brutal corporate economics, are going to reflexively refuse to use AI voices to replace humans. Authenticity has been the keyword that has driven our industry for over a decade now. And authentic AI is not.

Thus, I have no problem broaching the subject with a client, and I did. As we were chatting at the beginning of the session, I asked if the scratch was AI as I though, and my suspicions were confirmed. I commented that it was pretty decent and asked why they wouldn’t just use that for the final as opposed to hiring me at a proper rate. The reply? “This is for Cannes. The client would kill us if they knew we used a fake voice for the final.”

Then followed a ninety minute session where a very dedicated director explored every nuance the copy had to offer, and we got to experience the high that creatives working together in synchronicity find when they are, essentially, at play. The director’s job, my job, that interplay between two creators…..this is not something a machine can replace. And not something those creating elite work would want one to.

A premium production for a premiere event. The very thought of a “fake” voice was anathema.

Similarly, some months ago I had the privilege of doing national TV work for an Amazon ad campaign tying in Alexa, (their virtual assistant!,) and the Lightyear movie. This job involved a few lines as Mission Control, and was booked for an hour session. Another fun and creative director. Over a dozen takes in about twenty minutes. Session complete. Her parting words? “This is why we don’t use AI or sound design. We could never get this kind of range this fast.”

National TV. Fair pay. For the world’s leading virtual assistant. AI VO? Not even a consideration.

As we panic over being replaced by AI, we may even be ignoring its potential benefits to us as voice actors. And no, this isn’t the “create a synthetic voice to do your work for you,” speech. Still too much downside there in my opinion.

Rather, AI may help create MORE content for us to lend our voices to.

Check out this recent article about political advertising in The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/05/ai-political-campaigns-2024-election-democracy-chatgpt/674182/?utm_source=msn

There’s some scary stuff in there about deepfakes and other potential abuses, but what caught my eye was the discussion of using AI to create 50 commercial variations in a matter of seconds, (hopefully using licensed video and REAL copywriters!) to test different messages in different markets. And guess what? If there’s one part of voiceover that is perhaps least likely to use plagiarism software to replace human voice actors, it’s one where the opposing candidate could drop a spot saying, “Senator Twaddlebutt even used a robot to voice his campaign ads, replacing a human actor. Senator Twaddlebutt doesn’t care about the jobs of everyday Americans.”

More spots than ever. More content than ever. More need for VO than ever.

And that’s just one genre.

Inevitably, AI, plagiarism software, whatever you want to call it, will eat away at marginal work, and surely there will be the occasional splashy production that chooses to employ it. But it may also create as much new work for us as it takes away, or more still, and in any case, the hype-driven panic needs to stop. We’re not even in chapter one of what this technology will evolve into. This is the prologue. The foreword. Heck, the cover of the book. It’s okay to be vigilant and plan for disruption, but for those who think the end is nigh, all I can say is feel free to drop your client list in the comments on your way out the door.

Love them or hate them, traditional online casting platforms like Voices.com and Voice123.com have been an enormous part of the voiceover industry landscape for over fifteen years now. They fundamentally changed many of the rules of our industry, and opened the business to talented professional-quality voices in parts of the country and the world that previously had little or no access to voiceover work.

In the process, they also became lightning rods of controversy, blamed by many for everything from eroding rates and standards to commoditizing talent, to damaging the traditional brick and mortar voiceover space and the livelihoods of talent agents and union actors.

This article isn’t going to rehash the P2P wars of the past nearly two decades.

What I will examine, however, is how the nature of the most dominant platforms has now changed so fundamentally as to herald the beginning of a new era in voiceover casting…..one where individual voice actors are more empowered than ever before.

First, the bad news: The days of making a full-time living from online casting platforms alone are functionally over for voice actors just entering the field, and even for many veterans.

In the early days of the platforms there were a couple dozen elite talent who immediately mastered the functionality of the sites and quickly grew to dominate them. This small group of heavy bookers rapidly generated six figure returns from the sites, and through their example, (and in some cases, teaching,) hundreds more voice actors were soon comfortably earning well into five figures and beyond from Voices.com and Voice123.com alone, with a side dish of other platforms in many instances.

Jobs were abundant, competition was less intense than the sites’ claims of talent numbers would suggest, and the fruit hung low.

Voices.com for many years featured a top ten list on their front page showing the most successful talent over a 7-day period. This list was usually populated by the same ten or twenty VOs, with a few new power players emerging each year, but not much real change. Presumably the same cohort were the heavy hitters on Voice123.com as well.

This status-quo persisted for the better part of a decade, with more than a few talent earning into seven figures through these platforms during that time. Around 2016, however, things began to change.

First Voices.com, and then Voice123.com, began making changes to their algorithms and pricing structures that reflected marketplaces that were no longer growing at the same rate in terms of job numbers as they had during their first decade, despite a continuing influx of new voice actors, many well-trained, champing at the bit to attack any and every job posted to the platforms. The sites started to realize they had a problem. Membership was growing faster than new buyer volume. More voiceover artists were chasing proportionally fewer jobs.

Why was job growth slowing? The answer involves a confluence of events that ultimately will prove to have saved the industry from what at one time seemed like an inevitable future where a single casting hegemon would reduce voice actors to a faceless product subject to corporate whims.

First, YOU happened. During the 2010’s a chorus of voice actors who had found success through their own marketing efforts began teaching their secrets at conferences and through online courses. Jonathan Tilley, Marc Scott, Tom Dheere, Tracy Lindley, Anne Ganguzza, Yours Truly, and numerous others shared how to find jobs on your own, most often in realms not covered by talent agents like E-Learning, Explainer Video Narration, Corporate and Industrial Narration, Medical Narration, Telephony, and others.

Guess what? You listened!

Over the past ten years more and more talent have built strong and consistent income through direct marketing, taking responsibility for the success of their own careers. This has undoubtedly been responsible in part for the reduced growth of traffic on traditional casting sites.

And, you listened when Joe Davis & Karin Barth talked about the power of SEO, and when Celia Siegel and others showed you how to brand yourselves effectively to drive sales directly through your websites. More work is being hired through direct talent search than ever before, and more functional search driven by tools like ChatGPT will likely only increase this traffic, inspired in no small part by a modern generation of buyers determined not to pay rent to casting platforms.

Moreover, as unfavorable as these platforms have been for talent agents and managers, those who represent us have done a far better job of adapting to and even thriving in a changed landscape than they have been given credit for. Ten years ago the very best jobs, the highest-end broadcast genre work, almost always went through agents and managers. Today they still do. Relationships still matter, and there is no one better at building strong relationships with voice buyers than those whose job it is to represent us. They deserve a great deal of credit for holding the line.

Now, how about something a little more controversial?

Most professional voice actors see Fiverr.com as a blight on the industry. But what if there’s an upside to a micro-budget platform backed by billions of corporate dollars entering the casting space?

Many who have strong stables of quality clients don’t see Fiverr or similar platforms as a threat. They see them as the dollar store or what the car industry calls “zero lots.” A place for bargain shoppers to buy a generally lower-end product, and a place where occasionally one of those bargain shoppers will get a great deal from a voice actor who hasn’t realized that their ability could command much higher rates. Yes, there is a legitimate argument that platforms like Fiverr are highly destructive to the perceived value of our craft in general, but many in our industry disagree about the actual impact on high-end professionals. After all, does the Mercedes with 20,000 miles for $35,000 on the zero lot really threaten Mercedes certified pre-owned operation, where the same car with the same mileage might be $45,000? The zero lot doesn’t give you any extras or guarantees. Mercedes certified pre-owned ensures you are given white glove treatment and a vehicle you can rely on. Same car. Different types of buyers. The bargain hunter would never walk into the Mercedes dealership. The certified pre-owned buyer would be aghast at a shabby office that didn’t serve an espresso with a smile and offer a plush couch to close the deal on with an attentive salesperson offering peace of mind that any short-term repairs or defects will be covered by the dealership.

I’m not advocating one position or the other, but here’s something that’s not up for debate. Fiverr has sucked enormous wind out of the sails of Voices.com and Voice123 by investing millions of dollars to harvest their lower-end buyer traffic. And they’ve been immensely successful. While becoming problematic in their own right, they have helped reduce the likelihood that one mega-platform will emerge to the detriment of the industry as a whole.

Talent finding their own jobs through marketing and SEO. Agents and managers kicking ass as they always have. Low-budget platforms siphoning traffic.

What are the legacy sites to do?

Well, they’re doing the only thing they can do, albeit differently depending on the platform in question.

First, both sites have begun accepting the same kind of low budget jobs as Fiverr. Whereas Voices.com and Voice123.com previously held at least basic minimum project rates, both platforms now, (in one capacity or another,) allow jobs with any budget, even five dollar gigs. This has helped them hold the line against further imbalance between members and buyers, and to date does not seem to have impacted the overall quality of jobs on either platform, other than to add many new low-quality jobs without reducing the number of better ones.

More importantly, however, both sites are aggressively implementing algorithms that seem to have the effect of reducing access to most voice actors.

Voice123 has done this by creating a plethora of membership tiers that require lower-tier members to be extraordinarily careful about which jobs they choose to audition for. Indeed, anyone paying under $2,200 per year is now effectively blocked from auditioning in the volume necessary to sustain daily or weekly bookings. Strong talent in the highest two tiers are still able to earn five and even six figures through the platform, but even these voice actors are subject to the whims of an algorithm that punishes taking risks with regard to the jobs one auditions for. That said, Voice123 deserves credit for choosing to offer top bookers the ability to access the quantity of jobs needed to at least try to sustain their historical earnings on the site. Moreover, at least for now, Voice123 continues to limit the instances where it plays middleman and takes a cut of the voice actor’s pay.

Voices.com has gone the other way by sunsetting its Platinum tier and creating a new system that rewards voice actors who consistently engage with and book through the site. Meanwhile, anecdotal reports indicate that members who were used to seeing dozens of audition opportunities per day on Voices’ $499 Premium tier are now seeing fewer than they have in the past, in some cases considerably fewer. It’s only speculation, but it’s hard to imagine that, much like Voice123, Voices.com isn’t experimenting with new ways to spread access to more members competing for proportionally fewer jobs.

Now, to be clear, many voice actors still earn handsomely from these two sites. Indeed many still earn into six figures, and in perhaps a dozen or two cases WELL into six figures. They have stayed abreast of changes, understand how to manipulate their profiles and, (to the best of their knowledge,) the algorithms, and have years of experience applying best practices in their audition process, as well as elite skills to land the job with their performance. And yes, occasionally the talented newcomer, especially on Voice123’s higher tiers, can still find immediate results.

The bottom line, however, is that if you can afford just $395, $600, or $888 on Voice123, and $499 on Voices.com, it is now very unlikely that you can access the number of auditions necessary to build a full-time income on these platforms alone. Even when we add industry-favorite bodalgo.com and others into the mix, the volume just isn’t there. Remember, elite talent on casting sites have historically reported booking 7-10% of their auditions. Most full time pros book 3-5%. Talented newcomers often one in a hundred. The average job across these platforms pays $500. If you can only access 10-20 auditions per day, and run the risk of having those numbers reduced if you aren’t being liked/favorited enough….well, you do the math. The days of strong new talent banging out 50-80 auditions per day on casting sites are over, and they aren’t coming back.

And yet, I present this to you in the form of good news. Voices.com and Voice123.com aren’t going away. They, and others like them, will continue to be a tool available to those who wish to use them, (and I’m not getting into the morality of individual sites in this article….that conversation is a quick search away,) but the good news in all of this is that the era of these platforms actively disrupting our industry is over.

We are now in the era of talent empowerment. Supported by our agents and managers, our own hustle and web presence, and whatever other tools and platforms we choose to use to augment our income. The difference is that now, we make the decisions, and if one source of work doesn’t align with your process or values, there’s another one waiting for you that will.

Some people see this as the Wild West. For better or for worse, a lot of money was made in the Wild West by those who embraced control of their own destiny.

As a voice actor in the 2020’s, the future belongs to you.

 

 

 

 

It’s getting frothy out there.

The number of voice actors in a rabid panic over AI in the industry is reaching a head, with social media brimming with daily posts on the topic, despite very little real world evidence of synthetic voices impacting the bottom line of working pros, or even amateurs for that matter.

There’s a supposition among the masses that because the technology is improving, its ascension is inevitable, and that by definition it will supplant human voice actors to a highly disruptive degree. It’s easy to get caught up in the terror, but worst-case scenarios….heck, even moderately disruptive scenarios….are based on a lot of assumptions that very well may not hold up in the real world.

Now, there’s no question that numerous companies and platforms want AI voiceover to be an Earth-shattering thing. And, inevitably, we are going to start seeing even well-known casting platforms offer AI voices against or alongside their human talent. Many voice actors are busy creating their own voice clones which they expect to make available through their websites, casting platforms, or through the platforms of the companies creating these artificial voices for them. But this assumes that the demand will be present, and substantial.

It seems equally likely that AI voices will instead be received much the same way that those paid listings at the top of Google are. If you’re like most people I know, you skip right past those until you get to the organic results, right? Why? Because you know they are inauthentic. Paid for and driven by an algorithm, and not a legitimate reflection of the intent of your search. For most people that’s just reflex now, which is why buying search terms has become a loser’s game in most industries.

I believe we are dramatically underestimating the reflexive human nature to reject that which is inauthentic when it comes to voice clones and other synthetic voices. EVEN IF THEY ARE AMAZING, (and I’ve still yet to hear one that doesn’t break down into unnatural speech after a minute or so,) if they are listed against human talent on a casting platform, human nature will be to skip over them for the real thing.

We are being inundated with daily reports of the impending AI takeover of so many professions and walks of life. But is it actually happening? Take ChatGPT for example. Fun and interesting, sure, but assuming it will be more than just a toy requires multiple leaps of faith, as this article by The New Republic’s Alex Shephard points out: https://newrepublic.com/article/170855/artificial-intelligence-chatgpt-hype-kissinger

It may in fact turn out to be nothing more than a curiosity.

The potential impact of this technology is predicated on a tremendous number of very aspirational assumptions about demand. These are not a fait accompli by any stretch of the imagination. Corporations may be avaricious and cynical, but as a species human beings are not. We collectively and instinctively understand when something is fake, and we reflexively reject fake things.

I frequently ask my clients if they are considering or would consider replacing me with a synthetic voice. The overwhelming majority reply with a flat out “no.” Are they all being honest or contemplating all possible scenarios? Probably not. But I’ve yet to see this technology make even a marginal impact on the growth of my business. My agents are pushing out more auditions than ever. My manager is out there slaying it. Production companies and ad agencies are still hiring directly every day. And there’s more volume on P2P sites than ever. If the voiceover singularity is rapidly approaching, it’s awfully hard to tell.

It’s that time of year again. To make a complete jackass of myself with predictions for the New Year in areas that I have no business prognosticating about. I can’t wait!

First, let’s revisit how I did this time last year….

NAILED IT, CLOSE, OR MOSTLY RIGHT

Everyone will continue to panic about AI yet will be shocked at year’s end when most working talent have earned more than the year before. (This will differ from one talent to the next, but I think we can all agree that the AIpocalypse did not happen in 2022.)

Sports prognosticators will have mouths agape as the Cincinnati Bengals upset the Green Bay Packers in the Super Bowl. (Pretty darn close on this one.)

VO Atlanta will kick off a rocking 2022 full of live, in-person voiceover conferences that will fuel good spirits and revived friendships throughout the year. (Nailed it.)

The rapid spread of Omicron will herald a clearer-than-expected end to the pandemic, and by the end of March the world will look a lot more like 2019 than anyone would have expected. (Ish….certainly closer to 2019 than 2020.)

Commercials will become more and more geo-targeted, with different VOs attached to the same copy in different regions becoming more common. (Continuing to move in this direction.)

More and more VOs will see the light that snark and conflict on social media isn’t a good look, regardless of who is right. (It took a minute, but in the last six months it feels like everyone’s taken a deep breath.)

2022 will be the year of the anti-trend in casting…..with casting specs finding a happy medium between reads that have been trending hard for the last two years and more classical approaches. (This feels like a nailed-it.)

The Democratic Party will lose the House but retain the Senate. (I’m not saying CNN needs more political analysts, but…..)

MEH….

The expected party summer of 2021 will actually happen in 2022, leading to a short but intense economic boom. Travel stocks will soar starting in February. (I was right on the stock tip, though inflation quickly rendered both that and the rest of this prediction less than accurate.

Jenn Henry will wear a tiara in public at a major industry event. (I don’t think this ACTUALLY happened, but you have to admit you thought it would too.)

We will take a deep breath and remember that we have more in common as human beings than we do things to fight over. (There’s an argument to be made that this happened in the USA. The rest of the world, not so much.)

WELL, SHIT….

Despite saber-rattling and skirmishes, neither Ukraine nor Taiwan will be invaded in 2022. (At least when I’m wrong I don’t half-ass it….I’m COMPLETELY wrong.)

There will be two or more dramatic mergers or acquisitions in the agency and management world. (I still think this is coming, but it was a swing and a miss in 2022.)

Emmanuel Macron will unexpectedly lose the French Presidency. (Meanwhile, France24 has rejected my application for a political analyst spot on THAT network.)

 

Well, that was somewhat better than I remembered, save for the small oversight of not seeing a shooting war on Europe’s doorstep happening. Let’s see what I’ve got for 2023:

 

INDUSTRY: I’m gonna start by renewing that prediction of major agencies merging in the new year.

WORLD: Football first. Let’s go with the shocker again. Tom Brady stuns the world by taking a Buccaneers team with a losing regular season record into the postseason and turning on that Brady magic en-route to a final-drive Super Bowl win over the bad luck Bengals.

INDUSTRY: Economic conditions will reduce the number of new entrants into the business by forcing many VO-curious people to go back into the mainstream labor market. This will also lead to somewhat less competition at the lower-end of the VO marketplace, potentially forcing lower-end buyers to up their budgets.

WORLD: There will be a global recession in 2023. In the USA it will be mild to moderate, and largely over by the end of 2023. Europe and other parts of the world may feel it more severely. Inflation will come to a conclusive end by the end of 2023. Markets will start the year off bumpy and uneven, but build momentum by late summer and finish the year strong.

INDUSTRY: AI will continue to be a major discussion point, but will continue to have little impact on the average full-time VO. However, AI will inform the continued improvement of software aides and emulation technology for voice actors, making many parts of our jobs considerably easier.

WORLD: Unpopular opinion: The death of cryptocurrency will prove to have been greatly exaggerated. With more focus on regulation in the wake of the FTX scandal, and less investor enthusiasm for speculative altcoins and NFTs, more stable cryptocurrencies will rally from a market bottom and the entire space will double in value in 2023.

INDUSTRY: A substantial divide will open up with regard to how you use your demos. Agents, managers, ad agencies, production companies and other brick and mortar buyers will still demand the traditional one to two minute long demo reel. Meanwhile, online casting platforms and their increasingly complex algorithms will mean that you will need more and more fully-produced single-read samples demonstrating extremely specific deliveries. I’m in the process of creating as many as a thousand such samples for myself in order to get ahead of Voice123’s new algorithm change.

WORLD: Both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping will no longer be the leaders of their respective countries one year from today.

INDUSTRY: The union will more actively engage the voiceover community in 2023, and will make inroads into reclaiming parts of the industry that have moved away from it.

WORLD: Donald Trump will either be indicted, or quietly cut a deal with the government to agree to retreat from the public scene in exchange for avoiding charges.

INDUSTRY: The affectless, meh, don’t care, bored xanax read will have some time left to run, but as the economy turns brighter towards the end of 2023, the Holidays will see a return of brighter reads with more ‘up’ and energy, and by summer 2024 it will be cool to smile and sell a little bit again. Maybe. I hope.

WORLD: The frontrunners for the 2024 presidential election one year from today will still be Joe Biden and Ron DeSantis.

INDUSTRY: 2023 will be a running party for voice actors, with the conference scene back to being packed and in-person, and the social calendar once again being completely full….it’s time to get out and find your tribe!

WORLD: After so many years of turmoil, new moderate regimes in Russia and China will pull back from the brink, and politics in America will continue its slow move toward the center. In the end, the trend will be towards peace and compromise.

 

 

 

 

 

Five thoughts for the start of your voiceover week.

1.) Beware siloed advice in the voiceover business. When trying to figure out what advice and expertise is actionable for your VO business, consume a broad sample of opinions. It can be attention grabbing for an industry service provider or expert to espouse opinions that are disruptive or challenge the status quo. Sometimes those perspectives are indeed valuable new insights, but just as often they are outliers and could do your business more harm than good. What worked for one marketing superstar may not apply to you. What one production company executive took into consideration when hiring talent doesn’t necessarily apply to other buyers. What one agent looks for in a roster prospect may be completely different than the majority. Conventional wisdom needs shaking up from time to time, but it didn’t become conventional wisdom by accident.

 

2.) Give yourself a break. With the exception of certain commercial accounts and standard golden-handcuffs stuff like network promo, The Most Wonderful Time of the Year is also often the slowest time of the year for voiceover. If you’re feeling burned out, now’s a great time to consider giving yourself a break.

 

3.) Give agents a break. Got shiny new demos or a recent high-profile booking that you want to leverage into new agency representation? Great! Just keep in mind that agents take holiday breaks, too, and just like the rest of us they tend to be logy with seasonal overindulgence this time of year. Hold fire until late January for best results if you’re thinking of submitting for rep.

 

4.) Prepping for 2023. Now, however, is a good time to be prepping your VO action plan for 2023. What worked for your business this year? What didn’t? Take stock, and begin creating a roadmap to improve upon what worked and pivot from what didn’t in the New Year, so you can hit the ground running when things start heating up in January.

 

5.) The robots can’t even draw fingers. In case you’re still freaking out about AI in voiceover, check out the Lensa AI portrait craze that has swept social media recently. Controversy over how it appropriates art from the internet aside, my takeaway? The thing can’t even render hands correctly. When it tries they look like the aftermath of an industrial accident. Lensa AI strikes me as a preview of where artificial intelligence VO and synthetic voices will  land: Ooh, that’s fun! Now let’s go hire a pro to do it right.