The Rise and FALL of VOICES and VOICE123

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to remember Voices and Voice123. Both had lives with so much promise, yet cut so short. We had such hopes for you.

But as The Good Book says, “Yay, though I walked through the shadow of the valley of the pay to plays, I shall fear no evil, for the GVAA Rate Guide is with me.

Lord, we pray for these souls, Voices and Voice123, that though they be twisted and tortured by the evil of publicly traded corporations, that you may deliver them, Lord, once again into the kingdom of private ownership.

Pray with me, brothers and sisters. Lay your hands on your mobile device right now. Can I get a hallelujah?

[Hallelujah!]

All this we pray in the name of fair compensation and usage. Amen.

Now, are Voices and Voice123 dead? No. No, they are not.

But they both had a bad fall, and they both have a broken hip. They're in assisted living, and they just don't have the passion they once had.

In short, it's the beginning of the end.

Voices and Voice123 were both founded in 2003, and for the next 15 years, both of these sites changed the way, or more accurately diversified the way, evolved the way, that voice casting was done.

For decades before that, you were either in New York or L.A. and you had access to training and to representation, and you were union and you worked or you didn't have any of those things and you didn't work.

But in the early 2000s, there was a confluence of several different things, things like broadband Internet, Web 2.0, digital audio, digital video, and YouTube. Globalization. The shrinking and lower cost of audio tech and hardware. And thus the rise of the freelance nonunion voice actor.

And in a matter of a few short years, the available work for nonunion voice actors exploded. The home studio became a financially viable option, and companies that previously hadn't done so started producing much more media and working with voice talent directly and through the pay-to-plays to get that work done.

So as a result, if you were a trained voice actor with a good home studio setup and you auditioned well, you could exclusively use Voices and Voice123 or a combination of the two and make a multiple six-figure income as a nonunion voice actor.

And most often to the chagrin and vexation of union voice actors because they were not allowed to do much of that work and still aren't. So, there was a lot of tension and contention between union and nonunion voice actors in those days for that reason. The union no longer had a lock on that work and they were understandably upset about it. Now, some of that tension still exists today, although much of it has subsided and converting work is now a little bit easier and much more commonplace than it was in those days. Converting work from nonunion to union.

So, as we got into the 20-teens, there was more work out there for voice actors, both union and nonunion, than there ever had been in the history of the human voice

The pay-to-plays, specifically Voices and Voice123, controlled a huge chunk of that work.

Voice actors were making a good living. Nonunion rates were, by today's standards, more appropriate and professional. The platforms were transparent about their practices. And generally, life was good.

But as the 20-teens progressed, the financial success that these two platforms were having started to attract the attention of private equity investors,

The platform founders either sold altogether, in some cases (Voice123) or sold a majority stake to equity investors and had to then answer to a higher authority.

Shareholder value became paramount and everything else became secondary.

Egregious markup practices less transparency from the platforms, more insertion of the platforms into the service delivery process, double dipping, higher platform fees, and more restrictive policies became the norm and at times straight-up exploitation of both clients and talent took place.

During this time, we also saw the rise of the general freelancer sites like Fiverr and Upwork which began to take control of the lower end, the lower rate end of the voiceover business, and were quite successful at that.

Now at the same time, because of those circumstances that we talked about before, remember broadband Internet, Web 2.0, digital audio and video YouTube, globalization, lower cost audio tech and we'll even throw in now video conferencing in the 20-teens, voice actors had a much lower barrier to entry than ever before.

Home studios, access to online coaching, access to a global market, and technology all combined to make it easier than ever to get into the voiceover business.

By the end of the 20-teens, there was more voiceover work available than ever before. There were also more voice actors than ever before.

Then in March of 2020, the world changed.

COVID-19 hit. The world shut down. We were all stuck at home and many folks were stuck at home trying to figure out how to keep the lights on and money coming in the door.

And that low barrier to entry that had normalized in the 20-teens became the seemingly perfect on-ramp for a flood of COVID-19 refugees to get into the voiceover business.

Most, though, didn't get training, either because they didn't know they should or because they thought, “You know what, I'll just figure it out. It's just talking into a microphone after all, right?”

So now, beginning in 2020, not only did we have more voice actors than ever before, but we had more untrained and undertrained voice actors than ever before.

Fast forward to 2023.

And while the initial effects of COVID-19 are largely in the rearview mirror, we're still feeling its effects. Slow economic growth, a possible recession, war in Ukraine and the Middle East, and global uncertainty are all present and corporations are being cautious and marketing and media budgets have been cut.

Currently, SAG-AFTRA is on strike. And let's not forget AI and synthetic voice is starting to take part of the share of the lower into this business where the pay-to-plays began to finish in recent years, anyway.

And for the first time this century, there is anecdotally less work out there than there was the year before.

Listings on the pay-to-plays have been declining for months, and the private equity companies who now own the platforms have noticed and they're not happy. Morgan Stanley put $18 million into voices in 2017. And as of right now, in 2023, they're not getting the return on the investment that they had hoped.

And they've replaced founder David Ciccarelli with an interim professional CEO. And his job ostensibly will be to cut losses and make voices as profitable as possible on paper so that they can then unload voices and cut their losses.

Now, Voice123, which is owned by Backstage, which is owned by Cast and Crew, which is then owned by EQT Group (if you need a program, by the way, there's one under your seat) Voice123 is also under immense pressure to perform.

Will they be looking to slash and sell to the highest bidder soon? I don't know. But it wouldn't shock me if they do.

To put it bluntly, (which is my jam), the heyday of the pay-to-play is yesterday.

For more information on the VO Freedom Master Plan, which teaches voice actors how to market their services so that they don't have to rely on the pay-to-plays, click the link.

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And one more thing before you go. Make sure you watch this video right here.

I'd love to hear your comments. Make sure you put those below in the comments section or if you're a member of the VO Pro community, we'd love to hear your comments there or even in the free VO Freedom Facebook group.

The more civil discussion we can have amongst ourselves, the better and stronger an industry we can have for everybody.

Thanks so much for your support and we will see you back here again next week.