J. Michael Collins

The Annual Completely Unreliable New Year’s Predictions Blog

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.

5 Things for Your Voiceover Monday

by J. Michael Collins 14 Comments

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.

What It’s All About

by J. Michael Collins 11 Comments

I didn’t want to go downstairs. It was my privilege to attend Val Kelly’s Mid Atlantic Voiceover Conference, MAVO, this weekend. Best part for me? Not my event. I had exactly ONE breakout session, on political VO, on my schedule to present. I showed up at the venue around noon on Friday and by 3PM I was somewhere I almost never visit during a conference…..the hotel bar. My good friends Brad Hyland, Patrick Kirchner, and Cliff Zellman joined as we threw back a few cold ones and cut up like the knuckleheads we are. We met a married couple there for a hotel date. The guy was a new retiree and aspiring podcaster. Great conversation, and pure relaxation.

Things progressed to the hotel restaurant where a pack of VO goombahs including Yours Truly, MAVO Keynote Marc Graue, Cliff again, Brad again, Tom Dheere, Johnny Heller, Uncle Roy, and Scott Parkin had a boisterous and very rushed dinner before the speaker introduction session. At one point Parkin threatened the life of an infant with a set of cutlery. There was more beer.

Speaker intros were wild. Great energy, fun room, all of the insanity of the aforementioned dinner bunch with an Elley Ray hand grenade thrown on top. And congrats to her on the MAVO Muse Award for all her contributions to the industry. After intros a number of us went to, let’s just say, a private room, where more libations flowed freely and conversations were on the unfiltered side. It was nice.

Downstairs, a bit later, a radio play had commenced on the main stage, engineered by Uncle Roy and Holly Adams. Now, most of the time, at conferences, that’s where I would have been. I’m generally not one to disappear to the private parties. I like being with the masses and meeting my fellow VOs. I thrive on the energy of these events.

But not this time. This time I wanted to do exactly what I was doing. Sitting in a comfy chair in a rowdy room with a few good friends and now well-into a bottle of Glenfiddich, (Parkin again.) Mellow. Relaxed. Slightly inebriated.

After a time, the ever-responsible and always-thoughtful Johnny Heller suggested we should make an appearance downstairs at the radio play. I resisted. By which I mean I suggested he was out of his gourd and that we were best situated exactly where we were. Did I mention the Glenfiddich? I thought I had won the room, but slowly the party people headed downstairs. I didn’t want to go downstairs.

But, I did.

What awaited us back on the main stage was something genuinely special. Four people I know well, Carman Wilson, Jason Thomsen, Pat Kennedy, and Jim Fronk, all coaching and demo clients at one point or another, (Carman Wilson has a One Voice Award for her effort,) and a fifth guy called Greg whom I don’t know as well but who was doing a helluva job getting into his role as a detective…..were putting on a straight-up show. Five voice actors at various points in their journey, but who in that moment owned the stage in front of a collection of some of the biggest names in the business. For half an hour I watched as they got laugh after laugh from the crowd, with impeccable comic timing, not once fumbling a line despite being on a big stage under bright lights in front of their peers. They were brilliant. They were funny. And they represented everything that’s right with this business.

At a time where there’s more acrimony in our industry than most of us care to see, watching this group onstage helped me put things in perspective.

There may be more arguments in our industry than there used to be. Is AI a nothingburger or the VOpocalypse? Do you love VO award shows or hate them? Are those preaching work/life balance right, or are the hustle-and-grind advocates on the correct track? Are P2P sites the devil or just a tool in a toolbox?

Who cares.

What matters in this industry are Carman Wilson, Jim Fronk, Jason Thomsen, Pat Kennedy, and Greg the Detective. They’re living it. They’re breathing it. They are pouring every ounce of their heart and soul into making themselves the best at this craft as they can be. Will they all make this into the dream career so many want it to be? Maybe, maybe not. But I wouldn’t bet against any of them, and I wouldn’t bet against this industry continuing to thrive and grow because of people like these.

I’m glad I came downstairs.

The Why of the EURO VO Retreat

by J. Michael Collins 7 Comments

Last night featured the opening celebration dinner of the 8th EURO VO Retreat.

As always, it was an evening of laughter, fun, indulgence, and the joy of the finer things in life, as we prepare to embark on another week of intensive small-group learning, this time on the banks of Lake Lucerne in lovely Vitznau, Switzerland.

Paul Strikwerda recently wrote an article on the retreats, (https://www.nethervoice.com/jmcs-euro-vo-retreats-extravagant-or-priceless/) in which he rhetorically asked if an event with a price point over $5,000 that limits attendance to a dozen or so jet-setting voice actors is elitist. Fair question, and to some surely the answer will be yes.

But however lavish a EURO VO Retreat may be, it’s the “why” behind their existence that I haven’t discussed often enough.

Lessons Learned at the EURO VO Retreat

Being comprised of thousands of solopreneurs, all largely isolated in padded rooms and social media bubbles, it is very easy to allow a scarcity mindset to creep into what we do. Being self-employed is inherently terrifying, with a sense of insecurity being a defining feature for many. However good things may happen one day, there’s no corporate paycheck to fall back on if they slow down the next. We are our own safety net, and that net can feel thin at times.

This insecurity leads to gravitation towards compromising our value, lowering our expectations for pay, long-term security, personal happiness and pleasure, and the play we all deserve as a reward for our hard work. It makes many feel that they are not entitled to the same quality of life that their friends who work in the corporate world may have and causes them to buy into the mentality that we are just gig economy worker bees who should be happy that we get paid to talk.

The EURO VO Retreats are the opposite of that. They are lessons not just in growing one’s skill set and camaraderie but also in creating a mindset of abundance. They showcase that with hard work, extraordinary talent, and exceptional business acumen, this Wild West industry we have chosen to devote our lives to can be harnessed and channeled into a security-creating stream of reliable income that can render normal what once seemed extravagant. These retreats demonstrate what people in our industry can have when they take themselves seriously and embody a professional role in the classical sense, no different than the dedication exhibited by lawyers, architects, and hedge fund managers.

Those of us who have worked in this field for decades understand that there is, always has been, and most likely always will be more work than there is quality talent to do it. Regardless of the advances of AI, or the growth of newer, micro-budget parts of the marketplace, there will always be a strong and steady pool of buyers looking for exceptional talent and willing-to-pay rates that reflect their appreciation for quality. And we understand that voiceover doesn’t have to be a hand-to-mouth, hoping for the next job, hustle-and-grind lifestyle, but rather one where we can decide what work we do, how much we get paid for it, and when we want to be on call……or not.

What is the why of the EURO VO Retreats? The why is simply to show what can be…..and how what can be might be far more than you ever imagined.

I’m Going “Verified Human.” Should You?

by J. Michael Collins 9 Comments

The herd mentality in voiceover today is all about figuring out how to incorporate AI, voice models, and voice clones into your business plan. Who will be the first movers to get ahead of the AI voiceover trend and capitalize on it? Who will be harmed? Not me. On both counts.

I’ve spent my career trying to see where the herd is moving and then either getting ahead of the next move (or, more often,) moving in the opposite direction. This philosophy has helped me build a voiceover business and voiceover-adjacent businesses that have thrived for almost three decades. It has also served me well in financial planning and investing. Scared of the markets right now? I’m not. Warren Buffett once said it is wise for investors to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.” I’m buying market dips right now in multiple sectors while most people are selling. If the market crashes, guess what? I’ll still be a buyer. In the long run, the growth will be there.

AI Voiceover vs. Authentic Human Voices

Recently, I encountered a fascinating Twitter thread (https://bit.ly/3qxAe9f) by content marketing writer Rob Lennon, who has self-published 45 titles on Amazon and is highly familiar with the freelance writing industry. The freelance writing industry has similarities to voiceover, though it is not directly analogous. However, Lennon’s article struck a chord. Lennon predicts that “Entry-level freelance writing jobs will be decimated w/in five years and replaced by AI wranglers.” This is similar to my prediction of the imminent demise of entry-level voiceover jobs at the hands of AI voice models. The sub-$100 voiceover space will likely cease to exist for human voice actors in the next five years. The $100-$250 space could see up to 80% of jobs replaced by robots. And the $250-$500 space may see as many as 20% of jobs lost to AI. Above the $500 line, where quality and nuance trump price, there is likely to be minor, if any, erosion.

Lennon posits that “A chain reaction occurs. Fewer entry-level business writing jobs are available. Years go by. Fewer writers getting better at their craft. Fewer writers writing about writing. Thus begins the gap.” Voiceover will likely experience a similar phenomenon. Fewer low-end jobs available. Fewer new entrants into the industry. Eventually, buyers are left with a stark choice between human, or robot, as the available talent pool thins over time.

A market will emerge for what Lennon calls “strict human verification.” High-end buyers will demand authentic human voices. Consumers will demand them. And the most discriminating may choose to work only with those voice actors who can guarantee that their voice does not exist in an artificial form.

If you are licensing your voice in AI form now, it will be very challenging to assure future buyers that someone else won’t be able to use a model of your voice to recreate the deliverable you provide them. It may dilute your value in a market that starts to prize verifiably human voices. We don’t know what the future looks like. This is one of many possible outcomes. But one thing I’ve yet to see from AI modelers is a use case for how voice actors make more than pizza money from voice clones. Show me how we get to 5-figures monthly with an AI model, and you’ll have my interest. Until then? Going forward, J. Michael Collins voiceovers are Verified Human, and I’ll proudly display a badge declaring the same on my homepage in the near future.

Of course, I’m also buying stock in Veritone. So we’ll see.

*This blog is the writer’s personal opinion only and does not constitute financial advice.

Why “Best Demo” Awards Are Good for the Voiceover Industry

by J. Michael Collins 4 Comments

Recently there’s been a lot of discussion about the value of awards like Voice Arts Awards and One Voice Best Demo Awards in various categories. Skeptics have pointed out that being nominated for or winning an award for your demo reel is not in and of itself a sign of success. Ultimately, they say, only your booked work matters.

This perspective often comes from wanting to help talent focus on the meaningful things that will increase their bottom line, and I’m sure it is, at its core, well-intentioned. There’s a valid argument that a voice actor’s daily efforts should be expended primarily on tasks that generate work directly, such as auditioning and marketing. However, dismissing the value of awards for demo reels misses two critical points, one of which is directly salient to the bottom line of voice actors competing for these awards.

Best Demo Awards Provide Opportunities

First and foremost, one must consider the opportunity provided to a voiceover artist simply by submitting for a Voice Arts Award or One Voice Award. These competitions are judged by dozens of the industry’s most prominent talent agents, managers, and casting directors. Agents from the biggest LA and NYC agencies have participated, as have casting directors from all of the significant casting companies and even Disney, as well as representatives from the most sought-after and selective management companies.

When a voice actor submits their demo to one of these award programs, they have the opportunity to be heard by the key players capable of helping them access the highest-level work. And, while there is certainly no guarantee or promise that this will lead to direct opportunities, having the chance to have their reel listened to, often in its entirety in this setting, gives voice actors a chance to make a front-and-center impression that simply submitting for representation through the usual channels might not. It’s a rare opportunity to have the most impactful people in casting as a captive audience.

There is another benefit to these awards as well, though more indirect.

Improving the Demo Production Game

Since the Voice Arts Awards launched almost a decade ago, the industry’s best demo producers have been forced to up their game. The chance for an award should not be the primary decision point one relies on in selecting a demo producer. Still, it can play a factor in some voiceover talents’ deciding whom to work with. This has led to friendly competition among top producers and required us to pay more attention to the finest details of scripting, direction, and production.

Undoubtedly, the quality of demos produced by the top ten demo producers is considerably higher today than it was ten years ago. This is essentially a result of industry awards creating a more competitive landscape. This means that more talent is getting top-level competitive demos, and these superior-quality reels ultimately lead to more and better work.

Certainly, talent should be focused on immediate revenue generation. No one can argue that. But awards for demos or anything else in VO aren’t just a dog and pony show. They are a way of gaining the attention of the most connected people in the industry, and those impressions can help create channels of access that may not have existed for a voice actor before. The value is clear.

J. Michael Collins

AI Voiceover vs. Authentic Human Voices

Best Demo Awards Provide Opportunities

Improving the Demo Production Game

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