Is Voice Over Work DRYING UP?!? THE 6 BIG CAUSES

As I touched on in my last video, 2023 has been a slow year for voiceover. In fact, this might be the first year in the 21st century that we can honestly say that voiceover work has not… available work… has not grown year over year.

There's no hard data that I know of in the voiceover industry that shows the exact amount of available work. But I talked to a lot of people in this business and pretty much everybody agrees it's been a down year.

This has also been the year that A.I. has exploded onto the scene.

Terms like generative AI were barely on our radar a year ago and they're now part of our everyday lexicon. A year ago, A.I. Voices was a term and a concept we all knew and were aware of and knew was coming. But nobody had any idea what that was going to mean for 2023.

Now, that said, if we agree that voiceover is in a bear market then that begs the question: why?

There are six main reasons VO is slow right now and I'm going to break them down for you today.

acting, AI/TTS, business, sag-aftra, the vo industryPaul SchmidtSeptember 28, 2023AI, ai voices, strike, economy, training, covid-19Comment

SAG-AFTRA & WGA Strikes: Fighting for HUMANITY in Art

Here, today, right now, those developing generative AI are threatening to put a lot of us out of work. In October of 2020, the World Economic Forum said that while AI would likely take away 85 million jobs globally by 2025 (and we’re more than halfway there, by the way), it would also generate 97 million new jobs in fields ranging from big data and machine learning to information security and digital marketing.

But here’s the thing: The jobs it’s taking away aren’t the same jobs it’s creating. It’s not creating jobs for creatives. It’s taking them away. Good luck quitting your job as an actor and waltzing into a machine learning job.

And for a prime example of just how this is happening, look no further than our own industry and the current SAG-AFTRA and Writer’s Guild of America strikes against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which includes the major streaming services and Hollywood studios.

AI/TTS, creativity, sag-aftra, the vo industryPaul SchmidtAugust 17, 2023SAG-AFTRA, WGA, strike, AI, ai voicesComment

SAG-AFTRA Strike: The Most Important Moment in THE HISTORY OF ACTING

SAG-AFTRA is on strike, and it can be very confusing to non-union actors and voice actors, and those who aren’t actors.

Today I’m gonna break down the major issues around the strike, why this is a watershed moment in the history of acting (and no, I’m not overblowing it), and why non-union actors should not only pay attention, but should absolutely support the strike and advocate for us all.

Remember that episode of friends, when Joey lost his health insurance?…

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