Blog

Welcome to the first installment of VO Nuggets: Short blog posts designed to take a quick look at an issue of the day in our industry, and this one covers abundance.

We keep being told that the market is overrun with talent and that competition is fiercer than ever before. However, I find it remarkable how the top-tier performers I know (and I don’t just mean A-list talent who have already “made it,” but simply folks who can genuinely voice their butts off, wherever they may be in their career) continue to consistently book and command fair market rates for their work.

That leads me to a simple conclusion: If you are really, really good at this, and you are also an astute businessperson, you WILL work, and you CAN demand what you are worth.

If you despair because you feel like you are going up against the rampaging hordes for every job, remember that the cream rises to the top, and if you’ve put in the work to stand out, you will ultimately find success.

This also means that it is time to tone down the sniping, shaming, and snark on social media. Debates over fair pay are fine, and I’m a big advocate for demanding what you are worth, but when we operate from a place of fear and wind up at each others’ throats, we are playing right into the hands of those who would divide and commoditize us. I implore you to lift up and support your fellow talent, even when they make mistakes or sell themselves short. Engage in reasoned and civil argument, and educate no matter how long it takes. You never know when someone clinging to a wrong position publicly out of pride might actually be changing their actions privately because of your words. Name-calling and anger, however, will only make those who believe differently than you dig in deeper.

We should celebrate each others’ victories and successes and recognize that there is far more demand than supply for excellent talent. I’m thrilled when I see a colleague post a job they have booked that I also auditioned for. It doesn’t mean they “beat” me….it simply means that they were the right voice for the job, and I wasn’t. Next time, it might be my turn.

If you have the skill set, the technical ability, and the business sense, you won’t go hungry. This is what it means to approach the industry from a perspective of abundance, and not of scarcity.

Why should we support hones casting sites? Type “hire voiceover” into Google. Go ahead. I dare you. What do you see?

Here’s what I saw when I did just that a few moments ago, in order of listing from top to bottom (excluding sub-pages of sites listed here.):

Voices.com
Voicearchive.com
Fiverr.com
Voicebunny.com
Upwork.com
Voiver.com
Voice123.com
Schoolofmotion.com (with an article describing Voices.com as for clients with ‘Daddy Warbucks’ budgets.)
Launchparty.org (with an article suggesting Fiverr, Voices.com, and Voice Realm.)
thevoicerealm.com

Page one of Google. Paid and organic. If like 95% of the people hiring voice actors today, you know nothing about our industry, this is what you will first find when doing an internet search. Results can vary as searches get more specific, with individual talent sites often populating the organic parts of page one, but when it comes to the most-searched term in our business, there is nary a talent site, agency, casting director or union to be found. 100% online casting platforms or sites leading to them.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Let’s be honest with ourselves. Very few individual talent or agencies have the resources to devote to competing for SEO space with these sites, which are likely spending 5-6-figures per month on AdWords and other SEO tricks. SAG/AFTRA has the resources but lacks the inclination, (though maybe five years from now, when the exact same thing is happening to everything but the highest-profile on-camera jobs, they will.) Therefore, the status quo is unlikely to change. Unless and until the union or a similar labor-minded major player gets in the game with millions in funding, casting sites will grow larger and larger as they aggregate more and more of the vast non-union voiceover market, (with one, of course, trying to break into the union side as well.)

That’s why it is disturbing how many people within our industry continue to paint all sites with the same brush, categorically rejecting the concept of online casting sites with paid memberships. While we all dearly wish we could go back in time and let everything pass through our agents in a fully relationship-based industry, technology has changed the game. That doesn’t mean that a prominent place for traditional casting and self-marketed work doesn’t exist (SAG/AFTRA will continue to control the very best work for a variety of reasons, and one can build a great business by doing their own marketing,) but simply that the majority of voiceover work will almost certainly go through online casting platforms for the foreseeable future. The results speak for themselves, and no amount of wishing will make it otherwise. Unless a buyer has a preexisting knowledge of our industry’s traditional work channels, like any other good or service out there they will almost certainly begin by searching for it on the internet. This is not behavior we can control.

The good news, however, is that the behavior of online casting sites and their parent companies or investors IS something we can control, and it is already happening.

It may not seem like it, given the general mood of the labor side of our business, but we are winning the war.

Voices.com’s takeover and absorption of Voicebank (after the predictable lies that such an absorption would not happen) stirred the industry to action. Alliances of agents have formed, new and well-funded alternatives to Voicebank are launching, existing casting sites are modifying their behavior to adapt to talent demands, and well-funded new players are exploring the marketplace. In their typical ham-fisted fashion, Voices.com’s mendacity leads to the opposite of their desired outcome of industry domination.

The quality of jobs on their platform continues to diminish, and the quantity is not increasing as one might expect with all of their efforts. The agents they list from the acquisition are a fraction of those who were there before. Their overtures to the union have been largely rejected and have created massive pushback among prominent union members. Top talent continue leaving the site and many more continue removing their profiles. When Googling Voices.com, negative reviews populate the first two pages of organic results, leading any company doing their due diligence to think twice. Voice actors are not a dime-a-dozen. We are not ride-share drivers easily replaced and subjugated. We are powerful because we are the product these sites offer, and only so many of us can do this job well.

Beyond Voices.com, Fiverr.com has become so toxic among the respectable elements in the voiceover talent/agent/producer community that talent who work through the platform risk being actively blackballed. Very few recognizable talent use the site as a result.

The community of voice actors, agents, casting directors, and others stakeholders has the power to change behavior if and when we fight back. BUT, we must contest the field of battle if we are to succeed.

To paint all of the pay to play sites with the same brush is to refuse to fight. When we lump Voice123.com and bodalgo.com in with likes of the exploiters, when these sites act strictly as matchmakers, we surrender the battlefield to the whims of those who would take mind-numbing commissions and attack our way of life.

Yes, Voice123 is related to Voicebunny, which is a low-budget high-commission platform, but they are distinctly different business models attracting distinctly different talent and buyers in most cases, and Voicebunny is transparent about the shockingly high commission they take. Moreover, the parent company, Torre, actively keeps the sites separate and avoids poaching jobs from 123 for use on Bunny. I’m not a fan of the Voicebunny model, but as long as Voice123 is maintained as a matchmaker-only professional-level site, it is something to be supported. Frankly, if the management at Voices.com had demonstrated the foresight to separate their rapacious Professional Services division from the core site when they first had the idea, they would likely not be in the credibility sinkhole that they find themselves in today.

Ultimately, organizations like SAG/AFTRA and WoVO are right to lend their help to agents, casting directors, and traditional industry players, but if they want to truly join and win the fight they must found and fund their own entries into the classic online casting space, or partner with the existing players who operate ethically and transparently. A union aligned with bodalgo.com or Voice123, or Voice Casting Hub, or Cast Voices/A360 (which is entering the on-camera space as well,) or all of them would be a death blow to the ambitions of those who would use the industry for their own ends. Failure to do so is to ignore the reality of shifting consumer behavior when it comes to hiring voice actors and to concede the massive online casting marketplace to the bad guys.

As talent we must continue to offer feedback to our agents, the union/s, industry guilds and other stakeholders about how important their involvement is not just in restoring the traditional world of casting, but in mounting that list of search results when someone wants to “hire voiceover.”

The world is waking up to the threat posed by certain pay-to-play and discount casting sites, and talent are moving the needle of site conduct like never before. Supporting our agents, SAG/AFTRA, and other brick and mortar players is essential….but we must also take the battle to the front lines, and ensure that online casting is run for the profit and benefit of everyone, and not a greedy few. There is no fighting against technology and consumer choice. We storm the beaches today, or tomorrow the enemy will be even more entrenched. It’s our choice.

Who doesn’t love an old-fashioned New Year’s predictions article, right? Here are my thoughts on what we have to look forward to in the voiceover industry in the coming year.

1.) Having an abundance of audition and work pipelines will become more important than ever. If you don’t have at least five regular sources of potential work, you don’t have enough. What is your 2018 strategy regarding agents, production company rosters, online casting, networking, SEO, and more? Make sure that your stream of opportunities is diversified. In our shifting industry, putting all of our eggs in one basket is folly.

2.) The online casting marketplace will be in greater flux than ever. Two sites remain legitimate sources of legitimate work. Two others require a lot of nose-holding to get to the legitimate work, and new players are popping up faster than ever before, a few of whom may have a chance of sticking. The Voices/Voicebank acquisition has set off a well-funded rush to create alternatives and has spurred existing competitors to up their game. Look for a stream of big news in 2018, most of which will be positive for the talent community.

3.) Commercial rates will remain under pressure due to greater access to talent and, more importantly, declining ROI from traditional advertising. This trend will continue, while non-broadcast narration and eLearning will hold steady or get stronger pay-wise as there is more demand than supply in this business. Are you just chasing unicorn jobs, or are you building your business with less glamorous but more consistent work?

4.) VO Atlanta 2018 will be an unforgettable celebration of our industry as over 600 voice actors occupy an entire hotel. May God have mercy upon the staff!

5.) Minority voices will continue their ascent. Talent who ten years ago would have been considered niche VOs are now booking daily and making big bank. This trend will only accelerate as buyers clamor for diverse voices to reflect shifting consumer demographics.

6.) A distinct three-tiered marketplace will more fully emerge in 2018, consisting of LA/NY-based union work at the highest end, a large and thriving quality non-Union marketplace upholding market rates and using the copious resources available to learn to negotiate for things like residuals and limited licenses on their own terms, and finally, the ever-growing cut-rate marketplace typified by sites like Fiverr. As much as we often get animated over the latter, I predict we will see a settling of tensions in the New Year as it becomes clear that each market is composed of distinct buyers and talent and that while some crossover exists, it is only at the margins. The Walmart, Macy’s, and Louis Vuitton analogies are somewhat trite but not entirely without merit.

7.) Political VO will continue to experience an unprecedented boom in our current 24/7/365 election cycle. I’ve never seen an off-year as busy as 2017, and wherever you stand on the current Oval Office occupant, his presence will drive political VO business through the roof during the 2018 mid-terms. It is worth a serious look if you aren’t active in this genre!

8.) Acrimony in the industry will diminish as panic over how our industry is evolving calms, and we each become more readily able to discern how to turn change to the advantage of our businesses. We will still call out predatory coaches and demo mills, and be ever vigilant with regard to the companies and platforms that wish to profit from us, but I believe that in 2018 we will look back on 2017 as a year that proved that when forces set out to exploit us, we rise up and meet the challenge, no matter how well-funded their attempts may be. In an industry where the product walks, talks, (a lot,) and is limited in quantity and quality, we control our own destiny, and we remain united in our desire to lift all of our ships together on a rising tide of success and prosperity.

9.) Oh, and the Patriots will beat the Saints in another Super Bowl thriller, 35-34,

Happy New Year, everyone!

When things are going well, it’s easy to start thinking you are a superhero, capable of handling Herculean tasks without breaking a sweat. Saying yes to every client request becomes second nature until you have your day scheduled down to five-minute blocks trying to maximize and monetize every second. It can be a rush, and greatly satisfying when hard work comes to fruition, but sometimes we ask too much of ourselves and need to practice service recovery. Recently, during my EURO VO Retreat in Barcelona, I had one of those moments where I overestimated my ability to handle everything at once, and it almost cost me a fantastic client.

With our beautiful Studiobricks booth set up at the villa and having the occasional hour or two between presenting and hosting duties, I decided booking some client sessions wouldn’t be a bad idea. The first couple went off without a hitch, but on Tuesday night I woke up restless at 2 AM, knowing that I was well behind on email, administrative tasks, and other minutiae that probably could have waited. I tried falling back to sleep, but after thirty minutes abandoned the effort and went to the living room to work on my laptop. I figured I would work for an hour and then be able to crawl back in bed until 6; Fortunately, our son Tom had been sleeping well, so this sounded like a reasonable plan. Instead, I worked until sunrise, getting into marketing and demo editing after the emails. Before I knew it, breakfast time rolled around, and it was time to put my host hat on. Okay, I thought, I can do one night with no sleep. No problem.

I had scheduled a 90-minute live-directed session with a major new client for that afternoon. I presented on conversational reads in the morning and my energy was fine, but by lunchtime, I was starting to fade. Nevertheless, the show must go on, so at the designated hour I set my laptop, 416, and travel preamp up in the booth, and opened a session awaiting the client. The connectivity at the villa was not the best, so the client was already slightly irritated by the occasional miss-connects and dropouts. But, the session went well. We got through about a dozen scripts in a little over an hour, and everything seemed good to go. I had a quick listen to the raw file through the computer speakers, and not sensing anything amiss, (I’d done this a thousand times, right,) I endured the slow upload to Dropbox and fired that bad boy off.

Then the panicked email came. Something was wrong with the audio. I sounded off-mic and tinny. Impossible, I thought….I was on a 416 with a decent pre in a quality booth, and I like to think I know my way around a mic. Just to be sure, I grabbed my all-star audio engineer A.J. McKay to have a quick listen with me and tell me I wasn’t nuts. Problem was….I screwed up. Rushing from hosting duties into the booth, on two hours of sleep, I had failed to do one simple but crucial thing…..change the input on my laptop from the computer mic to the preamp. The client had over an hour of audio recorded on the very high-end, industry-standard voiceover mic which Sony builds into every new Vaio. OMFG.

Not only that, I had training to do that afternoon and a dinner to host later. There was no fixing this until the next day. The client was understandably livid, having hired not just my voice but my credentials and experience as well. It was easily the biggest VO Fail I’ve had in the past decade, and I was about to lose the account.

I fell on my sword, dropped the bravado, and explained what had happened and why they would have to wait. I fully expected them to toss me out like a radioactive potato. But, I sincerely apologized, and I offered to comp them 100% of the work that would be done throughout the week, until I returned to my studio, regardless of whether they kept me on or not. This was several thousand dollars worth of spots. I also offered them schedule priority for the week I returned and told them I would clear any times they needed since they were now behind on delivery.

When I stay at a hotel, and their laundry service ruins one of my shirts, I expect them not just to pay for the shirt but to make a gesture of apology as well. A smart hotel will do something that has a quantifiable value, like send up one of those $30 bottles of Champagne that they charge $100 for through room service, or offer a free dinner. It makes you forget their mistake and builds trust through a show of good faith. You suddenly like them again, and not because they just threw money at the problem, but because they demonstrated contrition by taking something out of their own pocket that they didn’t have to.

Smart companies engage in service recovery that delights the customer. Everyone screws up once in a while. It’s how you handle it that determines whether it ends the relationship, or gives you a chance to build new trust. In your VO business, when you fail, when you try to be super-human and realize you aren’t, and when your clients suffer because of it, fix the problem, and then show them your sincerity by doing something they won’t soon forget. You might just save the relationship.

Anyway, I’ve gotta run. I have another dozen spots to do for that client in just a few minutes.