The online casting marketplaces for voice talent have exploded in the past ten years. Between Voices.com, Voice123.com, bodalgo.com, and others, 300-500 jobs are being cast daily through online sites via public and private channels. This number easily equals (and probably exceeds) all agency jobs being cast through more traditional means on a given day. As we look to the future of voiceover, the fear of change has been, and remains, quite palpable. But, wait.
With this exponential growth come the teething pains accompanying any game-changing paradigm shift within an industry. Hyperbole is mixed with legitimate concerns about the business model, including rates, competition, ethics, and the direction in which the people behind the online casting sites wish to see the industry go.
Naturally, this uncertainty leads to personal divisions among talent and occasional sniping. Many of the loudest voices of antagonism can be found with surprising ease on the front pages of sites trumpeting cheap voice talent and with hundred-dollar-a-holler rate cards hiding in plain sight. None of us are saints in this regard, however, it is quite clear that wherever there is vitriol, hypocrisy will not be far behind.
Alas, I stand guilty. Infrequently, but too often, I have found myself tempted by the easy money of a low-budget job that will only take a few minutes of my time. I offer no defense; It is sheer greed. Typically, once the job is completed and I have been paid, I find myself feeling a lot like I feel after eating fast food; Guilty and a little sick to my stomach.
Every time I accept substandard pay…..every time ANYONE accepts substandard pay….it harms all of us, and it sends the message to the online casting sites and clients at large that if they press hard enough, we will buckle.
The allure of quick and easy money is not only damaging to our industry, it is also entirely unnecessary. We have been led, falsely, to believe that the business is inundated with talent, and that if we don’t take whatever is offered, someone else equally qualified will.
Maybe someone else will accept the bargain basement rate, but I suspect they won’t be as qualified as you think.
It is a pernicious myth that the supply side of the voiceover business is saturated. Tens of thousands of people nationally and globally are indeed positioning themselves as voice talent. It is equally true, however, that the number of these people who are truly talented, well-trained, technically savvy, and possessed of business intelligence is very marginal. I will be shocked if more than five thousand people in the USA are earning a full-time living as voice talent. Even that number may be high. A quick listen to the auditions on an average online job will show around 80% of submissions to be non-viable for technical or ability-based reasons. Even the vast majority of talent with agency representation does not make a living in voiceover.
This means that we, my fellow talent, are in control of the future of voiceover. We just don’t know it.
I have said many times and will say many times again, that there is far more work out there than there is quality talent to do it. In other words, we have pricing power, and it is up to us to exercise it. The time to do so is now.
Here are two thoughts on the future of voiceover that will terrify a lot of people.
1.) The online casting sites aren’t going away. They will only continue to grow and become more profitable, wielding proportionally more influence in our industry and over how we do business.
2.) The online casting model, which means the concept of an easy-to-use portal for those who need voices to find voices, is the future of this business. That doesn’t mean that it necessarily has to follow the same structure as it does today or that it will even be the same companies at the forefront (though it may well be,) but it means that the idea of aggregating jobs through clearinghouse sites is the way this and every other freelance business is going. We had better get used to it.
That means it is incumbent upon us, those who hold the trump card of supply, to shape the future of how we are presented to those with demand. It is also our responsibility to watch our own backs because no one else is going to do it for us. The people in charge of the online casting sites are not bad. I know many of them personally, and I can tell you that they are good-hearted, genuine people who love their families and kids just like we do. Nevertheless, they are business owners and would be remiss in their duty to their employees and investors if they did not maximize profits to the best of their ability. If you expect companies to place anything above profit, I invite you now to return from the 1950s and rejoin us in the real world.
This means we must shape the system’s future from within, not by assailing it from the sidelines. Far better to be the man (or woman) in the arena. It means that we must make clear to the powers that the brightest future, from which they can generate maximum profit, is not a high volume/low-cost model that degrades quality and leads to burnout but a world with fair rates and motivated talent.
How do we do this? First and foremost, we draw a line in the sand on pricing. We collectively and publicly agree to never charge a per-project price below a certain level. I have my number in mind, and we should begin a conversation on a figure representing the minimum value of our talent and skill.
I believe that only through collective refusal to work for less will we be able to effectively establish a permanent fair pricing model. If clients have no choice, they will pay. Let there be no doubt that any business with the budget to secure airtime or produce an internet video or casual app game is fully capable of compensating the talent who will add final value to the product in a manner that reflects the profit they will derive. Companies pleading poverty are pleading falsely.
Whatever has happened in the past, let us declare a new day in our industry and refuse to work for anything less than a minimum number that reflects our training, investment, and work quality. I believe we can achieve a consensus on a figure, and I will be the first to publicly pledge to abide by it. I encourage and challenge my fellow talent to do the same.
In addition to the professional minimum, we should work with organizations like WorldVoices to develop standard non-union minimums for different types of work. We should educate our peers when they are not adhered to. The message of talent pricing power should be shouted from every rooftop.
We should also utilize online casting sites thoughtfully and be aware that there are ways to maximize our profitability through them and protect the value of our work. Many myths are propagated about the terms and policies of online sites and future of voiceover. Allow me to address some of the more harmful ones.
Rights and Usage:
There is a common belief that it is the policy of the major sites that every project must be surrendered in perpetuity in all media to the client. This is not necessarily true.
Voice123 states clearly that you are agreeing to a final price for the work based on the terms posted by the client. This means that if they list that the project is for national TV broadcast, you surrender lifetime rights in that medium. However, the language is clear in that you only surrender the work for the indicated usage. If it were optioned for radio, internet, or another usage, you would be well within your rights to bill for additional compensation. Obviously, it is up to you to monitor this, which is tricky, but the language is not as broad as people think. Furthermore, you are perfectly able to add clauses in your proposal limiting rights and can add language indicating that accepting your proposal binds the client to those terms.
This last point is even more relevant to Voices.com and the future of voiceover. The sixth point in their terms of service states that all projects are full buyouts unless otherwise agreed in writing. I recently had a student encounter an issue with a client who used those terms to hold him to a very low fee for national broadcast rights. I contacted Voices.com about the matter, and they agreed that while the boilerplate TOS language is the default rights agreement, we are welcome to add language in our proposals that supersedes the standard terms.
Therefore, despite common belief, we retain ultimate control of our product on both major sites. Along with the future of voiceover.
There also exists the often-repeated canard that Voices.com does not allow you to contact the client directly and that SurePay is an evil mechanism to keep you from ever getting at the golden goose of repeat direct business. This is wrong in two ways.
First, while Voices.com does not allow you to include your contact information in your proposal, based on talent feedback to that policy they explicitly agreed to allow us to post our contact information on our profile pages. I have been hired directly from my page outside of the system hundreds of times, as have many other leading talents on the site.
Furthermore, once you book a job on Voices.com, you are given the client’s contact information under the “Payments” tab, and they are given yours. I have been personally told by people at the highest level of the company that their policy is strictly that any job posted to Voices.com should be completed through SurePay, but that we are more than welcome to contact the client directly after the job has been booked and work with them outside the site on other projects. Contrast this with the policy of some secondary and freelance sites, which looks downright benevolent. Heck, even agents don’t let you take full fare from your client after giving them ten percent of the first job.
So long as this policy doesn’t change, Voices.com is showing a very balanced approach to preserving their financial interest (which is their job) and being reasonable with those who generate their profits. Moreover, Voices.com has taken the lead in at least setting some sort of minimum, with no work running through the site for under $100 gross. While we need to move this number upwards for the sake of our collective prosperity and the future of voiceover, Voices should be credited for at least holding this line.
Let me be clear; The online casting sites are not on your side. They are not against you either. They are not good or evil, wrong or right. They are simply marketplaces where we trade our wares, and like any vendor at any marketplace, we pay the rent so that we can make a profit.
In this industry, there will always be hands in our pockets.
Our duty is to make sure our hands are deeper in theirs.