I had the opportunity for an extensive chat with Voice123 leadership this morning. As you can imagine, they are busy working multiple shifts, including overnight, to stabilize the platform and reply to talent and buyer concerns. Here are a few of the highlights on updates from Voice123:
1.) The Accept/Decline feature does not impact your ranking, regardless of your membership level. The ability to delete jobs without “declining” each one is something they are working on. They reiterated that accepting jobs that are a poor fit could lead to less favorable feedback from buyers, which may impact future invitation numbers for Premium members.
2.) Regarding usage details within a project, they indicated that Voice123 did testing on client behavior that indicated clients were more likely to post detailed information about usage in the project description field if they weren’t given tons of checkboxes and drop-down options when posting the jobs. They monitor this and include language in the project description field, encouraging clients to be as detailed as possible about usage.
3.) It was acknowledged that the purpose of the “negotiable” toggle might be confusing. It has been suggested that this could lead to more bidding wars and a race-to-the-bottom mentality. They indicated that the purpose was that, by leaving it off, talent would have the ability to present their bid as non-negotiable to the buyer (that is the language the buyer sees.) They indicated that they will be adding a TBD box as another option.
4.) Right-clicking will be coming back at some point once higher-priority items are resolved.
5.) They are working to improve filtering and managing the inbox.
6.) The ability to search by project ID is being looked into.
7.) Platform loading times/glitches/errors are a top priority and are being worked on around the clock.
8.) Budgets will be added to email notifications.
9.) Some jobs currently accept more submissions than requested (25/10, etc.) They are working on this bug, but they assured me that for the time being, clients will see ALL of these submissions, even if it is more than requested.
10.) The watermark is being reviewed.
11.) The project description and client notes will be moving to the top of the page.
12.) Auto-fill and templates for submissions are under consideration.
I was assured that Voice123 is listening and paying attention to the various threads on social media. Team members are working overnight to get things right. Our conversation was frank and candid, and I’m grateful they were willing to share all of this on the record. I’m looking forward to continuing to liaise with Voice123 leaders and the Voice123 team, and at this time remain very confident that they will have the platform functioning nicely over the next few weeks. Stay tuned for more updates!
Thank you JMC!
This answers a lot of questions for my call later. Thanks JMC.
With all due respect, you posted this in early Dec of 2018. It’s now almost July of 2019 and I don’t see how they’ve implemented any of these. Are they really listening???
Thanks for the info JMC!!
Thanks for the info JMC!!
Helpful questions and detailed answers. Thanks, JMC!
Up dates, even with careful plans, don’t always go as scheduled. Such is technology. I finally discovered why my invites went from 10-15 a day to 1. My Profile was totally messed up. I went from 100% complete profile to 19%. Most of the items that were filled out in the category boxes now reside in one giant blurb on my home page. I am working on re-doing my profile today (12.12.18)
I look forward to learning this new system. Mostly it is just some change, and the majority of folks just do not like any kind of change. Life moves forward and Change is the only constant.
Thanks for listing what they are working on. It is appreciated.
Wishing you all much continued success,
Richard
Thanks for taking the time to write this article, JMC. It’s very helpful. In some ways it seems like in an attempt to make Voice123 easier for clients they’ve dumbed it down for voice talent. (For those of you old enough to know what I’m referring to, it’s like the difference between using WordPerfect–where you could see the code that made the software work and work directly with the code–and Microsoft Office–where you didn’t have access to any of the details of the software). I’m sure Voice123 will figure it all out.
Much cleaner look to the site. I like it!
Gracias JMC!
Nice job sir. Thank you for your diligence.
Appreciate the info as well – I wonder, what it’s like on the other side of the site, for the “Seekers” – Hopefully they’re not as frustrated as the talent is, trying to work through the auditions and the updates.
JMC, thanks again for being the good steward for all of us. We appreciate the update of V123 and I’m definitely grateful to have you as a liasion and advocate!! Thanks for bringing us the latest news.
Thanks Mike!
Thank you very much for this information!
What angers me the most about all of this is that established tech companies don’t roll out a nonfunctioning update and they don’t go “Live” after a lot of testing. A lot of people in the VO community have cancelled their membership. They changed the terms with their new format – now premium doesn’t make the VO as visible as before. I don’t understand why they didn’t anticipate a lash back.
Thank you JMC. This is helpful for us to know. Please continue to share new developments. Blessings
Thanks for this. It pretty much covered everything on my list.
Re: 10.) The watermark is being reviewed.
Q] This would be the audio mark Voice Actors mark their audition submissions with? Or does Voice 123 mark auditions with automatically, this to prevent audition-file theft without booking?
[I am considering switching from one P2P site who shall not be named [lol] to Voice123 after hearing several positive reviews of the platform and its operations and it’s policies. Fair payment for one’s work; protection, respect and NOT exploitation of its talent is now my TOP priority question since having becoming somewhat disillusioned with P2Ps. ]
Voice123 has started adding a watermark automatically. The tone and frequency is a bit annoying, so they are looking into changing it.
I always filtered my auditions for dollar amount, so I only received auditions that met my minimum budget requirements. That option doesn’t seem to exist with the new platform, unless I’m missing it. Do you know if they will add that back in?
In the upper left there is a dropdown where you’ll find “Invitation Setting.” There you can set your minimum budget.
I’m a buyer and I’m very frustrated with the new site. It has nothing to do with a rulucance to change (the advertising/marketing industry is all about change). The new UI has been over simplified to the point of looking amature (e.g., the navigation takes up over a quarter of the page with large icons that don’t add anything to the experience). And there aren’t any new features that really add anything to the experience. My guess is the old site was built on a platform that was difficult to maintain, and this new site will provide long term IT cost savings, but really doesn’t do anything for users (buyers, in particular). I’ve been a buyer for many years, but starting to explore some other platforms. 👎🏻
Hi JMC – and VO colleagues. There’s not enough space here to vent all the issues I have with the new Voice123 site overall, but I’ll list a few and see if anyone else has experienced the same issues. BTW, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time sending Voice123 emails, and even spent an hour Skype with a Voice123 tech to provide “input” and identify “bugs.” For brevity purposes, here is one of the biggest issues that have yet to be resolved:
1) I’m in the EST zone – Midwest – and now, as a Premium Member since 2012, I only get Voice123 invites between a 11pm and 6:30 am the following day window. Maybe 3-6 invites total. After that 7-hour invitation “dump”, NOTHING the rest of the day. All with multiple submissions well over the requested # as JMC pointed out. So, the big issue there is — I’m sleeping when the invites come in and, by the time I get up — say 8 am — any invites are already over submitted 2x – 3x the amount requested or they’re already closed. Despite sending them screen grabs, etc. of Invite pages to help them identify the issue, nothing has happened. Prior to the Voice 123 overhaul, active invites were all on the page — 25 at a time — and were open until the number of invites were met, or the deadline had passed. And, I could throughout the day peruse the active jobs and decide which ones might be appropriate to respond to. As Voice123 is in California, apparently that’s why the invites go “dark” after 6:30 am for the rest of the day. I don’t know, as nobody from Voice123 has explained why the timing of invites has changed so dramatically.
2). I’m now listed (and it shows up) at the bottom 20% of VO talent. I can assure you, I was ranked higher and more successful than that, but Voice123 algorithm has cocked things up beyond repair. I get they want top tier VO talent. But if you check their other companies — torre.org for example, you’ll find all of them use the same algorithm to generate lead and business for the many companies. Again, their response is “they’re working on it.”
3) My renewal for Premium Membership is up in 8-days….and frankly, unless there’s a dramatic turnaround…I’m not renewing. And they’ll be OK with that, as they’ve added another 2000 VO Premium members since early December at $399/year. And at $1500 Quarter/$6000 per year, with 40+ members electing to go Platinum — you do the math. More than $250K for Platinum and another $800K for Premium members and they’re doing quite nicely without a big rush to fix things for VO talent.
4) Nearly all the other things JMC mentioned I’ve also experienced, and with techs working all night — since Dec. 2018 — they apparently need more people working on fixing all the issues, because things are still not fixed as of Jan. 20, 2019. Thank you JMC for at least attempting to get Voice123 to be transparent — but THEIR people should be responding to the Voice123 commu ity directly with details and fixes, not you. Best, Bob
I’m with Bob. Not sure exactly when the new format for sending audition invites out, but I noticed (and in conversations with 3 or 4 other premium members) that we just stopped getting any new work from V 123 around last july – sept.
I got 1 new job since the end of July and nothing so far in 2019. I no longer get auditions (unless they really low in pay) until they are 12 hours or more old. By then they have at least 50% and in some cases more than 100% of the auditions they requested. Despite being ranked in the top 30% (down from the top 20% since I haven’t been hired since August) I don’t think I even have a semi-fair shot, and to that end an AWFUL lot of my submissions don’t ever get listened to.
My guess is they want us all to pony up $6 grand a year.
Terrific and thorough.. This answers many questions I have. And outlines many of the things that the FAQ on V123 doesn’t cover. All things were there and the design wasn’t very intuitive.
And I found it problematic that the details of the project were not at the top of the page.
Gotta say, it’s been a few months since this “Update”, I’ve never seen FEWER auditions. The quality has been well below subpar, we’re talking at least 1-2 $150-200 tv voice over auditions. Whenever I report it to V123, they state that it’s an open marketplace and they can’t control what clients want to pay. They got rid of smartcast which was a huge bait for me because I got punished with a month of no auditions because of that stupid service, now I received even LESS auditions. I’m getting auditions for second language (which I don’t have on my profile), accents for Nigerian, Myanmar, and who knows what. PLUS, there is a 3 tier upgrade able membership program. I don’t even know what the cost of those are. Pay twice as much for 10 auditions a week. I seriously hate how the VO community supports this horrible service. Yes, I get they aren’t MIDDLEMANNING the thing and taking a cut, but they are horrible with audition numbers and seem perfectly fine with a world of $150 tv voice overs. May want to talk to them again.