Rolf Veldman - CEO of Voice123 on the future of AI Voiceover
/Rolf Veldman has been the CEO of Voice123 for over 4 years now, and it's been 12 months since our last catchup!
In this episode we really explore the progress that's been made in the AI Voice space in the last 12 months, as well as the developments at Voice 123 since it was acquired by Backstage.com last year, and how the nature of being a pro Voiceover talent is changing...
00:00 Intro
02:35 What has changed at Voice123 and the VO industry in the last 12 months?
05:00 What was your AI voice proposal earlier this year?
07:35 How has the world changed for voice over the last 10 years?
08:54 How has VO pricing changed?
10:20 Is dynamic audio changing the industry?
11:45 Has the development of AI voice models stalled?
14:55 How are we going to work out a legal framework for AI voice?
18:00 What’s with all the dodgy TTS / AI jobs coming across the P2P platforms?
22:05 Is there any abuse of the audition system in training AI voice models?
23:15 The fiver audition tool
24:38 What are some of the features voice123 has added over the last year?
29:13 How important are ‘likes’ on Voice123? How does the algorithm work with likes?
35:00 Are you still seeing new voice artists enter or exit the industry?
36:37 What do you think of your competitors in your field?
38:45 Can we expect any changes to memberships on Voice123?
42:40 Is Voice123 moving into the professional services space – managing clients’ voice hiring?
46:52 The different trophic layers of voiceover work
49:48 The changing nature of voiceover and what types of voices are popular
54:00 Do clients hire VOs from social media?
Here is a transcript for our differently abled guests…
Toby Ricketts
Welcome to vo life, the podcast and video podcast about all things voiceover where we talk to the most interesting people in the industry. And it's brought to you by Greg for the brain, Oceania as well, which I am territory manager of Oceania. So if you're in that hood, then look us up. But my guest today is the is all around the world that she's just come back from Brazil, for the company conferences, the CEO of voice 123 Ralph Veldman. Welcome.
Rolf Veldman
Nice to be here, Toby. Talk to you again. Yeah, three year?
Toby Ricketts
Absolutely. It's been 12 months since we last caught up and a lot happened. The most recent thing that's happened is you've been galavanting off in Brazil. And drinking lots of cocktails, I'm sure by the beach, and
Rolf Veldman
my face is still puffy. Yeah.
Toby Ricketts
What was the Brazil chip fair all about? And how did that go? So.
Rolf Veldman
So we're remote company always happen even before the pandemic, we've always set up our offices that we don't have a main physical office, but people work from different places, and we tried to see each other as often as possible. We're now at a space where we have 13 Different countries represented in voice 123. All the way with us, we have people in Australia. So your side of the world of people Indonesia, South Africa, South America, North America, Europe, and then you sort of have to throw a dart at the world map and see what is the most central place
Toby Ricketts
and surprising on a rock in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean or something. In
Rolf Veldman
hindsight, that would have been, would have been quite expensive, but might be might be the most true place to go. Because some people had to travel for like, 24 hours. Yeah, sad. But the good thing is that we finally got to see each other for the first for some of us for the first time, I haven't met some of my colleagues besides their torso. So you think you realize this? Okay. That's how tall you are.
Toby Ricketts
That's how you have legs, you've suddenly got
Rolf Veldman
a whole 3d person behind this camera? No, it was a lot of fun. And it was great seeing the team and had a wonderful time.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, I suppose it's like, it's all very well being a distributed company around the world. But there is that thing about the human connection that, like, I've missed it, because like, you know, I used to go to the one voice conference quite regularly, and that sort of thing. I just haven't for the last three years. So it's, it's gonna be interesting, engaging with the world.
Rolf Veldman
I think I think this is our version of conference, because a lot of voice actors work from their home studio. And they don't get to see people that much. So this is our equivalent of doing that. There's been a lot
Toby Ricketts
of fun. Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah. So I guess starting, like, you know, we talked to 12 months ago, and it was, it was a very good chat. There were lots of changes sort of afoot at voice 123. What are the sort of biggest things that have that have happened over the last 12 months? To voice one three, as a company and kind of to more generally, the industry do you think?
Rolf Veldman
I think the same time last year, we were not what we were just acquired by, by backstage. So we have partnered with backstage but just under a year ago. So for us on a company level itself. That's that's a big change. We went from the founders, Alex on that, and, and Tanya being present in the company to no longer being there. And then suddenly, we had, we were part of a larger company with way more resources and way more experience in the entertainment industry. So for us as a company itself, just looking internally, it's been a learning process. Just seeing what else is out there and learning from from experts like like backstage and some of their sister companies, suddenly, we're part of a very big team, which has been great. So that's a big one from us, as a company on a on a, let's say, customer facing side, we've been focusing a lot on making sure that the boom of the pandemic is not a temporary boom, because we had the 2020 2021 period where a lot of people came online, that were previously offline, meaning just by sheer pandemic, reasoning, you had to google your way through VO. And then, of course, as a reflex of some people going back there was our plan as a company, how can we make sure that people are are introduced to working in voiceover online, stay online. So we focus a lot on making sure that the clients who come to our platform, stay on a platform build functionalities for them, make sure that they have more information about how our voice on three works, they can better manage relationships with voice actors. Same on the voice actor side, we tried to share more about what kind of clients are liking your what kind of clients are booking you to get more information about how your online business works? We've been focusing a lot on those kind of functionalities. And then a big thread throughout the year was, what are we going to do with AI? And how is it going to manifest itself in a company? So it felt like it went by in two minutes, even though we did a lot of stuff as a company?
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, absolutely. I feel like for lots of people COVID has just reset the concept of time. Can't tell how long things were ago anymore. It's it's very confusing. So yeah, as part of that you announced you had Big quite a big announcement at voiceover Atlanta around the AI voice thing. You want to just recap for people that missed that at the time, what the gist of that was?
Rolf Veldman
Yeah, so there was shortest version is that we think a part of the future is that AI is a tool for voice actors and clients to use. So I'm thinking that in the next couple of years, you will have your own AI voice that you will add as a package and sell it to clients. And clients will use AI version of your voice to optimize their product, which means that we as always on three want to make sure that you have those tools, that's the shortest version, you can go different directions, where we would we were working on is, how can we make sure that voice actors can train their AI model and have ownership themselves about that AI model? And how can we make sure that voice three is somewhere in that process represented in this case? How could we want to make our platform in such a way that you could offer your AI voice quite easily without us taking any percentage of that deal, but just making sure that we have the technology for you to use it in a in a sound way. So our announcement was, we're going to start a trial with the first 20 voice actors that can grow record their, their AI voice, and then showcase it on voice 123. And to sell it as packages to client or to sell at a passive income to client, whatever use case there might be. We had spend, I spend the last four years researching where it's gonna go. But then last year, we've been testing a bit with clients where we think a I might find a use case, first, we were afraid of it replacing voiceover completely, we have no longer have any sort of fears in that area, we just think it's a new type of Yo, it's a new tool that has entered the market, and is going to disrupt voiceover in the same way that maybe marketplaces like ourselves have disrupted it, or how home studio has disrupted, or how source Connect has changed the way you work. So I feel this is another tool that voice actors and clients need to understand that our plan is to make sure that everybody can understand it.
Toby Ricketts
It's interesting, isn't it? How they Yeah, that the groundwork shifts and we forget that we've had these sort of tectonic shifts of, of home studios. I mean, and you know, that yeah, that's biggest thing instead, yeah. Because you know, you when you think about the 90s and stuff, how, you know, in order to be a voice actor, you had to be in a big city, you went to the studio every day. And you know, those days are very much, you know, it's this still that happening, it still happens, but it's a lot less I would
Rolf Veldman
even argue it's it's close to half of the VO work is done. Yeah. So the majority of this work is still what we call in house offline. But it's still a long way to grow. But it has been such a tectonic shifts, when you mentioned just the fact that the microphone that you're using there now is to some extent avoidable by people rather than companies making change.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I mean, you think about the explosion in, in, in the uses of voice as well. Like there's so many entire categories of voice that just didn't exist back when there was nothing anyway, it wasn't it wouldn't have been economic then. So it's kind of it's kind of like one of those mutual things where it's like, what that what happened first was at low cost, you know, home studio voiceover or was it the uses that they had? It's, it's interesting.
Rolf Veldman
Yeah, it is interesting, especially because most of the most, most people still look at voiceover as if it is a TV commercial. Or as if it is a movie. And that has become such a small part of what VoiceOver is also, the length of content usage has changed, right? You might have recorded a thing 10 years ago, and they would repurpose it for a year or maybe two years, sometimes even five years. And now if you play it twice, you already need new content. So the longevity of content has changed, which has also changed pricing change, like there's way more work, but it is at a different price. It's a different pricing, different rate. And I think AI will change the rates as well. Not necessarily go down, but just differently. You might have, you might have done a lot of you're gonna charge for pickups differently. They might, they might be going all together with a good AI system.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, suddenly the client could just make the changes on their own perhaps. And so there we go. The interesting, isn't it? Yeah, it's it's very interesting. I definitely think like the premiere the pricing model has changed. significantly. Like I know that the word in perpetuity has suddenly popped up a lot when it never used to be a thing. You know, it said that that's definitely changed. And
Rolf Veldman
most clients use that because of in a kind way. Like blissfully ignorant. They don't know so much about how the industry works. It's hard coming into vo from the outside looking in, like a vo industry. I think I've mentioned it before. For me, it only exists for voice actors. And then for everybody else it is it is another thing that they do. So if you're a client working on an ad, or on a on a video game project, the voiceover is just one part and you try to work on it as all the other things. And then there's this whole rate business and think oh, let's just do it simple in perpetuity is what what my studio recommended me then I don't have this hassle, even though I only use it once. So it's kind of training people in their process on what the right lingo is or what the right legal framework is. Because it can it can get people into trouble. It can
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, usage is one of those really tricky things that is still changing. I think as as it went on, like I kind of went out on a limb, you know, a few years ago on a sort of chain Here's my model and basically said, you know, if it's not paid placement or if it's not, if it exists somewhere online, it's going to exist forever online, let's be honest, like, once you put once you've recorded a commercial, and then someone's copied that and then re uploaded it, you've lost control that you can't keep building that same client forever. So it's only when you're paying to play it that that sort of, you know, the licensing model applies. So, yeah, it'd be interesting, also how, how dynamic advertising is starting to come in in terms of personalized ads for one person, you know, especially on the streaming services, I know here in New Zealand, occasionally, there are personalized medicines just now where they know your name. And so they will have you know, a voiceover which actually references you, which makes people's ears pick up, have you done any research into whether that's something that's happening on your platform, or is that more affordable,
Rolf Veldman
we're playing the added as a new category for the clients as well like dynamic audio ads is what it is. And there's it's also related to radio, because if I'm traveling in a car, and I'm entering a different connector with my GPS, I'm entering a different region, I might have to say a different location that I'm at, they tried to connect this dynamic audio ad, sometimes even with weather channels, so that when it rains, or when the sun shines, you get slightly different content in your ears. So there's already some frontier ad studios working on that it's not mainstream yet, but I assume with the technology more as, as companies like Spotify, maybe start offering that, then of course, our clients are starting to get interested. So yeah, that's already happening. And it's interesting, it's an interesting field, it's interesting how this field keeps changing. And an annoying thing, as soon as I understand it, it's no longer relevant. Isn't you have to learn again. But it's also quite interesting.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, that's that that's the case. So sort of coming on to AI. More specifically, like I there was, I feel like there was there was this explosion of development about two years ago, like kind of just before we talked last time, it was all like, oh, it's moving so quickly. And then it kind of seemed to settle down a little bit after after, like a billion platforms that use Docker drawn to launched, and just were just like, you know, using a plugin to just, you know, to generate pretty average audio, let's be honest. Like, I feel like everything's settled down, and then all these individual use cases started sort of coming up. And, and, and you'd have individual companies sort of focusing on specific area, what are some of the sort of the most, you know, the the things that have been happening most of the last 12 months, and the stuff that you're most interested in at the moment with AI voice
Rolf Veldman
is precisely what you said. So a lot of people got a lot of founders, people who are interested in technology and interested in boys made a presentation to a investing company, got a got a couple of million dollars to create a product and then realized this is actually quite hard. And then put on top of that the recent, like recession that came in 2022, a lot of these companies that started two years ago are no longer viable companies, there's a bit of a decline. And, like with anything like with, with platforms like ours, there's no one size fits all solution, there's not going to be a monopoly on voice and they're going to be a monopoly on AI voice, it's going to be hard, the same way as as a human to do all types of video. So it's going to be hard for an AI to do all types of view. And I think after a year or two years of testing, a lot of companies came to that same conclusion, there's still a couple that do generic voiceover models, but most now focused on a specific niche, because AI is essentially what goes in comes out. So the AI can only be as good at a voice as the voice actor. So they're focusing on companies focusing on AI specifically for video games AI, specifically for IVR is AI specifically for corporate presentations. And it looks more and more like that's the way the platform is going. And it had impact for us as a country as well, we wanted to maybe partner exclusively with one AI company, or maybe even try it ourselves. But we realized soon enough, there is no need. And there's no, it doesn't make any sense to try to control this, the ideas may put it more in the open. And so our plan is okay, these are all the providers from in the video landscape. These are all the providers in a corporate narration landscape. This is how we judge them, or we might connect them with you. And make sure it's the right contracting in place. Because I think that's the one thing that's missing in his AI space is how to do this within the predictable legal framework. Visiting both the people who build AI models, the clients who use AI models, the voice actors who use our models and platforms like ours, they all have the same intent to make sure that the rights are distributed to the right people, which in this case is the voice actor and the people who create it. But there's not a very fixed legal framework and these new terms pop up in in different contracts, but they're not good enough yet. So ideally, we work a bit together with with unions with other companies. And then we can set a standard that is applied by everyone similar to how I would love to get to a place where give a or grateful to brain as like this is a template and was the three body and the union and all these people approve of this template that makes it way easier.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely is it's the area that I think scares people the most because of like things like the big standings. Laurie, who, who suddenly found herself the voice of tick tock and unbeknownst to her from from an AI, you know, job she did. And, and and also charging for it like when it's when it's even just the kind of conceptual problem around that of like when you're when your AI voice and goes and does jobs for you like is how does that work? Like, you know, how was that chargeable? Is it the same rate as me talking? If it can't be, you know, this, there's all this sort of stuff. And also it's kind of this tension, like, like they have on YouTube with the content ID or something. So if you're, I guess that would be if your model was leaked, or something and suddenly your voices on stuff, like how you pick up on that and unable to chase that. And so, yeah,
Rolf Veldman
yeah, the edge cases, the day will be there, and there will be some issues around it. But essentially, the best selling case is similar to any fear that voice actor has about their audition being stolen. In this case, it was quite similar. It just happened to be AI. And it happened to have it on a on tick tock, and I think it was not tick tock or data. But it was one of the middlemen in the middle who did it. And I think tick tock and Bev worked worked things out there. But yeah,
Toby Ricketts
it was a great sort of visible, it was like one of those watershed cases where it was like, what, what's going to happen? Where's it going to go? And I think it went, they went the right direction, because they did a fantastic job of, of representation, etc. But of course, they know that it's undisclosed, but at least it it was very public, and then embrace different awareness to the problems that can happen, you know?
Rolf Veldman
Yeah. But as we know, like, the case is on the front page is not where Bo lives, it's all about his work that you do with your returning clients where regular clients, so you want to make sure that that is done correctly. And I think the only reason there's no legal framework yet is because everybody's still figuring out how this technology will be used. It started off with, it's going to be like a voicebank of, of AI voices that might still exist for it. When use cases, then we think going to replace all these new categories, oh, then it's going to be a new category. And it has created some new type of yo like long form audio books that would normally not get sold. But yeah, you would, you wouldn't price for that anyway, because there's no budget for it. And then AI jumps into those, those those nooks and crannies. And I think now it's going to be closer to a tool that you as a voice actor, and you as a client need to need to learn as a post editing tool. And as a, as a package deal that you could send to clients. That means that you have to change a bit of your pricing. It's easy for me to say, for me to say I'm not that worried about the legal aspect, because I think the actual misuse cases won't be that high. Because what if I learned one thing from the voice 1234 My time it was on three is that most clients, number one, carriers make sure that the voice actor is treated fairly, at least as most of the feedback that we get. Whenever we talk about AI our clients tell us how's the voice actor being paid? So it's been interesting to see that the goodwill from both sides is just the hardest thing to figure out.
Toby Ricketts
That's great. Yeah, it's good. It's good to hear. There were some like I know, last week, I my feed on voice 123. My inbox was full of the TTS jobs, like two pages worth with like Chinese characters across like as the title, which obviously showed that they were from China. Have you noticed like, especially like big countries like that, trying to get ahead of the space and get English TTS. Like, it's definitely come across your platform, and it has across the other platforms as well. You notice that kind of a wave of that or a trend of that in the last few weeks.
Rolf Veldman
Last year, I would say yeah, and there's been a couple of companies specific back coincidentally, from China that we had to block. But our system is set up in such a way that's easy to sign up. So you create a new email address, and then you do it again. So if we have a flagging system, we've always done three. So as soon as we feel that these are not ethical AI jobs will take them off. But we do review them. But there's more TTS work than ever TTS meaning text to speech. And it means in most cases, training the models not actually selling your full voice. But just for training purposes, I'm going to ask you to record him because I want to test his model that I've built. And because the funding in in technology is still happening through this company that we talked about earlier, that will will continue to be work for voice actors that are getting paid just to record a model. And that's it. But it's a temporary time where you can say okay, I helped train this model, but I'm not selling my rights. But I think it will shift to a moment where as soon as this technology is good enough, you will have to pay to have your own model.
Toby Ricketts
Interesting, because I saw that I've seen these all these jobs come through and I've basically gone no blanket No, because like in my sort of the way I feel about it is like I'm training a model. It might not be my voice. But they'll say well, we just trained a model with two voices and like it sounds like you but it's not your kind of thing. And that that would affect you know, I'd be signing away my rights effectively. Because it's not me, but it does sound it's
Rolf Veldman
a good point. So that's where maybe a legal framework can give some ease of mind. Or maybe I could say There's a use case where two voices are being merged. Yeah.
Toby Ricketts
Well, that's it. Maybe that's something that you can define in your contract and say, I'm happy to do this as long as it's not merged with anyone else. I'm Yeah, it's my voice only and then I'll sell the rights to that. That's probably Yeah, that's probably a good good clause there, Ed. And I think this, it'll be like this. It'll be like, Oh, this, what about this? And then we'll add a clause to that contract. And,
Rolf Veldman
yeah, just like three, three years ago, like four or five years ago, maybe? Yeah, roughly. Companies were paying boys doctors around $100,000. To record a Texas speech model, it took 30 hours of recording, and it took a lot of sessions. Now, the time it takes to record an AI model is to two hours, two and a half hours, you have a basic model, and the quality is higher than it was five years ago. There's not there's just simply because the technology is evolving. So that whole process is changing. That's why that we can see the price of projects for TTS going down, because the technology is getting better.
Toby Ricketts
Hmm. And the time required is less I guess. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's very interesting. What else? The other thing, like and I brought this up with other voiceover marketplaces was Do you think there's any abuse of the audition system? Like when was some puts up a long script and then says, you know, everyone had to go listen, they get 100 people reading it? Does that? Is that enough to train a model? You think? Oh, for that? Yeah. Like if they download as 100 auditions, I wonder if that would be enough, or or the quality would be good enough? Probably Probably
Rolf Veldman
no, yes, the main, the main reason why they want to work with one actor or with only a couple of actors is because to train models, you want to have some sort of consistency, not necessarily any performance, but in his own environment. And so if you have 100 Auditions with different sound environments, then you're going to get a very clunky combination of voices. So if I could speculate on the worst possible scenarios might be that if I, if I look for Toby Ricketts online, I can find a lot of audio of you, if I compile it all together, I might be able to create a model, but it's a lot of effort. Just to save money, I could also just contact you. Because what these companies are learning is that I don't the just the AI model is not enough. Because the same way that technology gets keeps changing, the client needs keep changing. And and the way that we perform, voiceover keep changing, like the natural voice is something that has been popular the last couple of years, before it was different than the next five years, next five years, a new type of video will be very popular when it comes to voice style. So you will always need to always keep engaging with the acting performance of the voiceover. So I is constantly behind. I don't meet for it's not enough for me to have your AI voice. Hmm.
Toby Ricketts
That's cool. That's, that's, that's good to know. And like I like the the approach that you've taken in terms of like getting ahead of the game, and like trying to get time to, like, you know, allow us as voice artists to decide the rules, in collaboration with the clients before it just becomes, you know, the free for all? Yeah, it's fantastic.
Rolf Veldman
Because there are companies like just one more scary thought that there are companies like Fiverr, and other companies have been investing, I don't know if you saw the Fiverr audition tool already. Fiverr has an audition tool where they are, which is something unfortunately, I talked about, to them about two, three years ago. I guess they took that idea. Because we had something similar in mind where you have, you would say I have an audition, which is like a high, high end form of of getting to know what you can do. And just listen to your samples, which also gives me a an indication of what you can do, but not in my script. And then there's a space in between, which might be your AI voice reading my script, it's not yet it's not an audition. It's not the same as a sample because it's, it's, it's not the same as a regular sample, because it's my script. So somewhere in between sets this and it gives the client a slight indication of what it might sound like. So if you put that on your profile, let's say oh, you're always on three profile, you have a scripts box where they can type it in it, generate your voice, they can download it, they can just listen to it. And they say, Okay, this is I like this, let me contact Toby. And I think they have been trying to take that approach. I happen to know the company they're working with, and I'm not afraid that the technology that they're using there. So that's gonna be okay. But some companies are already working on some new applications of VO as AI.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, fantastic. And it's really cool. Yeah, and I didn't hear about that from fiber. But it's very interesting that that they've, they've taken that approach. Yeah. Cool. All right, we'll move on from Ai because we could talk about it for a very long time. And, and more into some sort of the stuff around voice 123 And how the platform works and how it's changing because like you say, like, Would you say it's, it's in A? It's um, it's constantly in the development phase. Are you adding more features than you did say with the last three years, like in the last year because of this extra capital we've got from backstage.
Rolf Veldman
Not yet. But we always had the sense that we made a big change in 2018, and last month of 2018. And I feel we've been in trying to complete the product ever since. And our goal is to complete it for the next clicker for the next year and a half to make sure that some of the missing functionalities that we feel are there should be added there. For example, we always wanted to showcase to our voice actors, these are clients that like to, but only like this year, we've added that. And there's a couple of functionalities like that, that we'll keep adding to our voice on three platforms before we feel it is complete. Now it's never complete, because there's always new things that come in and new developments that we would have to adjust to. But I feel that there are some some things missing, I feel that the messaging system that we that we have, is very useful to our clients. But I've always had to still move a lot of the work to their email, which is fine. But then sometimes our client gets confused on where where's my compensation happening. So those are small things that we need to change. My Having said all of this, my my team members keep telling me roll whenever you're in interviews, you always talk about things that are not going that can still be improved. It's my natural default mode. I think as my job is always look for things that should be better. I'm not the person to talk about the things that go well. Yeah, just put that in. Yeah, there's let's assume 95% as well, with the last 5%. It takes the longest, but
Toby Ricketts
it's where a lot of our efforts are. Yeah, nice. That's fantastic. Well,
Rolf Veldman
we and and of course, there's a big functionality that we introduced two years ago, which is the ability for clients to not just audition voice actors, but also book them directly. And that's, we had for, we had it as a almost like an optional feature there. And we'll keep it as an optional feature. But it's keep getting more and more used by more clients, especially in combination with the ability to pay securely, we see voice actors using that whenever they have a new client just for the first payment. And we see for clients using it, if they have to pay out multiple voice actors, they prefer to use one system to pay. So that's a functionality that's growing a bit. But we need to make sure that the way usage is negotiated in that form is more flexible for the voice actor and the client to negotiate a bit more. Yeah. So more features
Toby Ricketts
there. Yeah, so that count on the on the upcoming features that you've got on your site, which is actually a really good part of the site where if anyone wants to like see what's coming up? It's what's it called? Under the booth? Isn't it as an upcoming feature? Yeah, had a tab open.
Rolf Veldman
If you just the Google Voice on three roadmap, rows and three products product you will get?
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, 10 basic features, the stuff coming up, like adding video to your profile, which is exciting. And yeah, the flexibility around booking would be fantastic. And yeah, with the booking thing, I've definitely found that it's been it's been very good. And you get paid a lot quicker than you might otherwise it comes basically straightaway, which is called But occasionally, like, I'll get booked, and I'll think, Oh, great, I'll do the job deliver the audio and be like, where's the payment, and they haven't actually started or they haven't chosen to use that. And so there's not too much visual difference between a job where it's been booked through the system, and whether it hasn't and yeah, it was just one of those sort of
Rolf Veldman
no. So we've been doubting to go into the escrow space. Right? Right, because it puts the fear into our users, because that will happen with voices. And then suddenly they were in the middle and they changed the rights and made everything go dark. We don't want to do that. But we also want to make we don't want to get even having these examples that you mentioned, were playing books, but maybe it's not 100% sure yet. So we want to force the client to pay that moment and make sure that we can release the straightaway. And so we're starting to do that more and more. But I think what we were planning to do there of what we're already doing is make sure that every step of the way everybody sees what is going to voice on three, what is going to voice actor and what the client is actually paying. So there's no there's no mirage of what is happening and fully transparent.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you've got a very good track record with transparency, I think in terms of you know, you're very clear about what you do and why you do things, which is, which definitely works in your favor, which was fantastic. On that subject to that. So the algorithms drive most scientists these days, like it's data or data out, something happens in the middle there, which is just like there's only a very small percentage of people on Earth who can decode these algorithms or your code them. Likes is something on voice 123 That's some voice actors that depend on it for their for their living. I kind of have a religious fervor about like, It's all how many likes Have I got today? Like, it's a metric that drives people to to to change their behavior and change what they do on voice 123 Personally, I've never actually even noticed like what I get, like, for what I don't know how many likes I have, it's just I just go on and do the stuff and you know, see what see what jobs arrive. But like, why, how do they play into how visible a voiceover is? is on the sides likes, how important are they.
Rolf Veldman
So we have two ways to get work on boys on three. One is we have a generic search, right? Where we have all those doctors in a list. And that's where a client can type in words like I need a conversational voiceover or I need this kind of voiceover. And that is directly connected to your sample name. That's one. That's one algorithm that we have. So that's why sample names are very important. The likes are not important, anything related to the search. That's what the search and contact, then we have another one that is about clients wanting to receive auditions from multiple voice actors, by our project form. Our promise to the client is that we'll deliver relevant, auditions, relevant, meaning that they fit your specs, and then it's up for you to decide who you're going to work with. And the way that clients are motivated to, to distinguish between the different voice actors that come in on on their project inbox, is by giving 1234 a one or two or no like at all to a voice actor in their proposal inbox.
Toby Ricketts
So they can actually rank that it's not just a like, on or off, it's actually a star system or 21234. I interest. Yeah.
Rolf Veldman
Because as you know, a lot of clients have their own clients. So they want to share who they're working with as almost like a similar to how agents work. Like I have this, here's a boys like, let them audition, I select the five and I send those to my clients, it's similar to how our algorithm works. We just have to make sure that instead of 1000 300,000 voice actors applying, we need to make sure that a handful applied, that's what we use the algorithm for us to sort between all those people, we use a mix of memberships and likes. So depending on how much you pay, and how many likes you have you get invited sooner or later. That's the basic of it now, right? There's a flaw in it. Right? The flaw in it is that it is it feels subjective. And not every client uses it. Right? The best way for us to know whether or not a audition was successful or not, is whether we know whether you get booked or not. But that conflicts with our fundamental approach of we don't want to control the whole process of EA, we want to put voice actor and a client to have their relationship and if they want to move it offline and move it offline. So the lag does not tell the complete picture. But it tells us enough to have to make a decision.
Toby Ricketts
And how does that work with if you're encouraging clients to book direct or someone books you have search? That doesn't count towards your likes at all? Does it and it doesn't if someone finds you on the project
Rolf Veldman
edition from an addition, that's now part of like,
Toby Ricketts
so we're okay, cool. And is that a recent change was that
Rolf Veldman
the last couple of months, okay, I want to make it easy to afford a voice actor to basically prefilled that information. So the client only has to press Accept, like, even easier would be let's say, Project X happened. And then two weeks later, we ask all the voice actors, did you get booked or not? And they say yes, no. There's an honor system. And that is? Because if you always say yes, then you say yes. Well, there will be another way for us to get to know whether or not addition was successful.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, it's tricky, isn't it like trying to find a way, like with the system, which just lets us interact with, with clients.
Rolf Veldman
The thing here is that on an individual level, it doesn't work. But because we have hundreds of 1000s of auditions happen. It works because of the sheer volume of data we can get to see, okay, these people are getting likes, nice. People are not getting like so much. They need to still work on their on maybe selection of the projects they're auditioning for. And we see that in most, in a lot of cases where people start dropping, especially in the beginning of their career, it's mostly because of their sound environment, not necessarily because of their performance qualities. So we're starting to provide more feedback loops to those voice actors say, Okay, this is what our clients are directly or indirectly telling you. Yes, we just
Toby Ricketts
weren't. That's good. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's absolutely one of the things that I hear most is, is people thinking they've got a home studio, and actually they've got a microphone and a basement and it's,
Rolf Veldman
it's got all the equipment, but it's all about the soundproofing the environment. Absolutely.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So like then the likes. They expire, don't they after a year? Yeah. Is that right? Yeah, they so it's basically so you kind of got to keep your A game rolling. You can't just sit on your laurels and be a big voice actor and get every time.
Rolf Veldman
The idea came from the fact that we don't want to get like a monopoly from people who've been doing this for for. Let's say you had 100 likes five years ago. And for the last three years, you haven't had received any likes also because maybe the type of voiceover as on voice three is changing. We want to make sure it's up to date. We're gonna give new entry people also a fair tense. And so yeah, it's constantly recalculate.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, absolutely. Are you seeing? I mean, you saw lots of people joined during COVID as like talking about new entrants. Like lots of people came in, did you see like an exodus as well after as people sort of went back to their day jobs, or what kind of inflow Have you seeing of people taking up voiceover and, and leaving as well?
Rolf Veldman
Well, there's two types of people that came one are people that have not experienced vo before and thought, Okay, this is a way to work online, I can perform let's try a thing like always on three. But there are the other voice actors that have been joining are people that normally only work through an agent or work in a local studio, and then suddenly had to change their setup and go online, those people stay, if people tried it for a year, are filtering out. But we have those people coming on even before and after dependent people that want to change their career. And realize after a couple of months, again, it's really hard. Maybe I should not start straightaway on a matching site, like wasn't the three but maybe start with a company like gray for the brain and learn more about the basic self and fundamentals of voiceover before I pour everything and trying to make it work. So we see that there's definitely been a spike and but some people have stayed as well, particularly those who were only working in studios before I know working online.
Toby Ricketts
It's interesting to know, because it's it's always interesting seeing what what types of people are coming on. Like, I'm always amazed at how well whenever I run my voice courses, how there's, there's all these different groups represented this, like the gamers that want to get into gaming voices, and there's like the X actors, and there's like, you know, people trying something different. And it's interesting to see which way that you know, how those demographics have sort of shift sometimes, you know? So yeah, that's interesting. So the, some of the competitors that you have in the space, like the the voiceover marketplace, space voices.com, for example, as made some pretty big changes, which lots of people said was sort of influenced by Fiverr, who's you know, the biggest player? Well, so the fire, someone told me that Fiverr had like a massive market share in online voiceover, which I was quite surprised about, because I don't really take much notice of Fiverr. But, and I'm not on there at all. But do you have any like idea of how much of the market share they have, it's in the library and so
Rolf Veldman
much nuts for them. So the way that Pfeiffer makes money is because they have every type of freelance work on there for a fiver. Right? So what they do is that if I am looking for a voiceover, and I happened to go on Fiverr, for them, it's more like a tool. Okay, now that you're here, look at this editor. Now that you're here, look at this video producer, now, you're here, look at this engineer. So their market share share of each of the individual character categories is not that big. But the sum of its part is quite big. Yeah, right. The they do have a lot of voice actors, but as a motive voice actors that are just getting started or do it as a side gig to some of the other projects that are market share share is actually not that big. In fact, when I was trying to, to, to talk to different companies about whether or not wasn't really required, I also talked to Fiverr and other companies is was interesting to say that they they do need a company, they do need to work with a company that has a way larger market share, they're still clear to two big digital players and its voices. Everybody else is is addressed half below that. Five are included and Upwork included.
Toby Ricketts
Interesting. Yeah, that's, that's interesting. And I mean, they have a big
Rolf Veldman
part of the content share. Yeah, yeah. Where our clients with, which makes it interesting.
Toby Ricketts
And I mean, it's interesting. Yeah, I mean, you know, the, in both voices.com and, and, and voice 123, very much specialist like they're very niche sites in terms of like we this is all we do, but as opposed to all the all the other stuff, although we know voices has moved into this kind of space of sound engineering, translating, which I don't think it's necessarily taken off that much. But but they've definitely sort of indicated that's the direction, they're also getting rid of their own lane and that sort of their their Platinum membership and, and making it more of a kind of a level playing field as it were, or at least giving it some kind of like voices like a rating system. So you don't have to pay for it. But it's based on the kind of meritocracy. Is that something that that voices 123 might consider in the future sort of leveling it? Or is it do you think the stratified because I know you've struggled with pricing, there was a list at one stage of there were like 20 Different kinds of prices and all these different, like, you know, what you get for that? And it's it's it's simplified a lot. Again, it's not as simple as it was, but it's definitely come down and number. What changes can we expect any changes in terms of membership levels in the future?
Rolf Veldman
No, not necessarily membership levels, but a membership perks? Like we want to add more things to memberships. Because there's one there's two ways to grow more. One is to take more and the other one is to offer more. I think in our case, offer more is more closer to our strategy. So let's say you're a starting voice actor, you might start off with a 395 plan on voice 123 Or maybe a lower plan. And maybe the first six months you have access to a series of courses or maybe you have access to us reviewing your home setup. So I think Our, our way of being a bit of an industry has always been memberships. And so we're going to keep it that way. And I know that voice voices is changing that slightly, it also allows them to to have more people pay. So because they will have a lower price point, they might even take more of the transaction. So I don't think it's necessarily out of out of wanting to level the playing field is more about, okay, how being more in every every transaction at a higher rate, I think the membership model works for us because it puts ownership in a voice actor as well, we would, with these new memberships that we've added, we have had more paying voice actors. And because we had more paying voice checks, we had more happy clients. Because if you're paying to a product, you're more invested in it, you can use it for free. Having said that, you can use our product for free if you get started. But those who are clients love the responsive voice actor. And you're more likely to be invested in a company. If you're paying for if you're using all these pay to play all these different networks for free, then it's hard to keep up. So we rather have you invested in ours. So you're part of success. Yeah, and I don't see that changing someone's I think the voices plan is they've invested a lot of money since 2016. When they raised that round. I think they raised $20 million. And they invested in mostly in sales teams, and now they need to show for growth. So there, it's been interesting to see the work, it's instinct to realize that we're not that different insights, in terms of how much more workflows through a platform are different in size in terms of company, we're only 25 people, I think there are 100 Plus. But it's been interesting to see that even with all these new companies coming in, and going out that the two remain here. Now it's not to say that we need to be complacent, I think the whole marketplace idea, the pay to play idea is is ending in the next couple of years, I don't believe it is very viable for the future. I think our next the next generation is already looking for more vo work on digital spaces like like a tick tock or Twitter to or any kind of creative space rather than having a platform like ours unless the platform is structured more as a tool. So I'll keep mentioning the word tool, because that's one of our plans in next couple of years to switch more from the marketplace towards the tool. The thing that's the only way to, for us to stay relevant in view,
Toby Ricketts
it's giving clients the access to those those high quality voices that they used to hearing on all kinds of things without having to just trudge through, like 200 auditions, because I've never done that before. I know just how it's a real pain point is just to get through those. And actually, that was something I was gonna ask you about. It looked like on your website, they in June, you mentioned that you have whereas it's the like, voice over services and solutions by voice 123. So it sounds like a similar thing to like manage services or more projects. So you kind of agenting voices because you've got knowledge of the platform. Is that is it? Am I reading that correct?
Rolf Veldman
It's sort of like, we've always, like we call it a self service platform for clients, you do everything yourself. And then we started to tracking how many clients that are posting for the first time Oh, boys industry. And to be frank, how many clients are posting on other platforms for the first time? How much do they know about view. And in, in between 50 and 30% of the people use VO for the first time, no idea how it works. And sometimes they have quite complex process projects. So I need let's say you need to hire a voiceover in five different languages, it's going to be hard if you don't know how to do it. And if you talk to an agency, they tell you, Oh, give me two months, and I'll do it. But they have a deadline of a week. So we figured out we can be almost like your your prediction production assistant on your crew. And that's what we've tried to position ourselves to these clients. And we help them either manage the service completely through platform, we occasionally help them with translations or with any of the post production needs they might have. So yeah, we've been moving our way into a managed service kind of solution.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, right. That's interesting. And will jobs be popping up that are from like, lighten up the client is voice 123 Effectively, yeah,
Rolf Veldman
I think more and more Yeah. Which a good thing is very clear projects, we will always say that it is on behalf of somebody else and as transparent as what we can share from the clients perspective. But the it will happen more and more because we realized why are we so actively removing these people because then they will just go to different companies. We can help them around. We can help them a bit train amount of use it and they can use it themselves the next time. And there will always be complex projects where you want to need help. And some some there's companies that have their in house creative team or some companies that go outsource if you have your in house team it's nice to have an assistant on board that can do the VO X part of this because we realized and I know this Almost sounds obvious. But I realized more and more last couple of years that we are experts in VO, and how much that is worth, and how Vo is such a specific niche with their own rules and their own their own game and their own their own rules, I guess that we can start to offer services around that, without it taking away from what we have is just adding new types of work that would normally not come towards 123.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, and that's fantastic. That's a really good thing. And I guess it's some I mean that straying into the tangent that the the territory held by agents traditionally, but the writing has been on the wall for quite a while that agents are kind of like in this new world, as you say, like, you know, with with tick tock and things that are just so fast and so furious, and frankly, scare me scammy to bits. But like, you know, in the old agency world seems quite slow now, in terms of it takes days to turn around, it costs an extra, you know, 20% or whatever. So, the energy, do you see, there's moving into that space? I mean, it's kind of does sound like that's the kind of space?
Rolf Veldman
I mean, yeah, I would love to in the near future have like a voice on three agent, which is basically a team of people on our platform that behave as agents, where the agents work now is that they, they use email. So they send out a huge list, listen to every single audio have to structured all email, give it back to the client takes days or the agents get burned out. And there should there should be technical solutions for this. And in fact, that is what goes on three years if you use it correctly. So it seems very obvious for us to maybe have some voice actors on our roster that are only doing this type of work. And it is also conflicting. What do we have now? So we have to really think it through that it doesn't, quote unquote, eat up our existing business, but it only works for a new type of work. Yeah, well, I see use
Toby Ricketts
cases for that. Yeah, interesting. It's always such an interesting tension between the clients and the voices and the platform in terms of like an end trying to balance the work between experienced voices and new voices, because there's a kind of a place for both. And there's, you know, like, I've talked about it before, different trophic levels of that have sort of separated out now in the one line voiceover work, where you've got the really sort of low stuff that sort of, you know, below, I don't know, $400, right down to sort of, you know, 10 or $15, for real newbies that are doing very low impact work. And then that kind of mid layer of sort of elearning and, and stuff that needs to be professional, but it's not like, you know, it's not acting or it's not real top level voiceover and then the sort of stuff that's the replace the old studio work, which is, you know, the multiple 1000s of US dollars. And it seems like yeah, that that people settle into those kinds of different layers. And some platforms have settled into this sort of different layers. So it's, it's interesting to see how it, how it has evolved. And how do you make sure what sort of No, you got?
Rolf Veldman
What how long does it take to get to that last stage?
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, like, I mean, it's based on a number of things, including, like, how good you are at voiceover. But also, I think, the context you build up, but it's also an audio engineering thing as well. Like, it's the space you're recording in. And it's how you process your voice. And I feel like it's all these different factors, which aren't that clear to a to a newbie in terms of like, it's you, you. It's why, Greg, for the rainbow setup. Of course, it's so that you can like learn from the people that have been on that journey already. And kind of get a ticket through. But yeah,
Rolf Veldman
it's it's an interesting, because I think I liked that distinction. But I think how hard How hard is it to get in this first place in that group now versus how hard it was maybe 10 years ago. And I think what the digitalization of yo has done is that that part of it is easier, because 10 to 15 years ago, if you want it to succeed, and maybe even five years ago, if you want it to succeed in in view, you almost need to have an assistant more so than you need a manager to manage all your contacts to manage make sure that your your your finances are in order and then also find time to actually do the work. Like you're running your your VO business as a business and then you a lot of people are successful in our platform, or maybe partners tend to be spouses from each other and they work together. Or and we say that more and more digitally native people that I grew up with, with internet tools and find it easier to automate sort of this work, like make sure that they use the same system for invoicing, the same system for contacting and they're they're prioritized that part. And they seem to be able to move along that organizational part of the Oh, faster than then they were able to 10 years ago share purely because they have more digital skills.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's interesting as I mean, it's a lot easier from that perspective. Now you've got things like zero that can do your accounts. And, you know, there's so many online tools you can use to just make things so much quicker and easier. But also I feel like it's not as there's no gatekeepers, like there used to be in terms of use, like in the old old days, it was like you went to an agent if your reel was no good or they or they already had someone like you on their books, they wouldn't take you on because they're like Why would anyone duplicate Voiceover The Voice already got, you know, you had to fill a pigeon hole that they didn't have filled. And so now, I mean, you can, as long as you as long as you do have the talent, I think it's a lot easier to move into that that area where you're earning well and can convert into a profession being a full time professional voiceover but people still underestimate how much time there is around actually just doing voice work. Like it's basically it's like, I don't do voiceover audition for a living. Sometimes I get to work, you know?
Rolf Veldman
Because, yeah, the stereotype is you're in studio performing all day. But yeah,
Toby Ricketts
Don LaFontaine anymore, like the icon that used to just you know, move to between studios in a in a, in a stretch limousine, because it was it was he made more money having a stretch limousine, apparently than he would if he was catching taxis or, or getting to, you know, other New York studios. And that time, but anyway, I digress.
Rolf Veldman
If I can go on one part of that a bit further. Yeah. One thing has aided to that change is that the the switch to putting creators at the center, meaning more ownership and more authentic, authentic voices, meaning that resulted in more voice overs needing to have a face and needed to be seen. And you used to have more of a generic type of voiceover that was American, but now we want to have make sure that we have minorities represented. And we want to make sure that everybody's represented in in the different types of view, which, by default, makes it more people have access there and have to grow to a certain extent faster to an Echelon than then than it was 10 years ago, where we're all fighting for the same place. And the barriers of entry were kept shot by the same people knowing the same people it's one of the reasons I've always on three got started is because we have Latin American founders that find it hard to get their foot in the door, that accredit technology to have more access. I still like that to remove those kind of obstacles. And I still like that part of our voice and three story a lot.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, absolutely. Lincoln. Yeah, this is so true. Like, I've had lots of conversations with with actors who have, you know, gotten you know, a lot of work in the, in the industry of the years at about this new, you know, this new cultural phenomenon of, of, of cultural appropriate appropriation and things like that, like you spoke to do accents, and now you have to think quite hard. And it's much more of a, a, a narrative about where the jobs come from, and who should do it kind of thing. Like there's so much more of that comes into play. But there are so many more people at the table now, which is fantastic. And thanks to places like voice 123 And and the other voiceover marketplaces because like you do sort of just need a you know, a bit of sound engineering knowledge a good studio and they and a microphone and you can compete with with the rest of the world. Suddenly, you could talk to Coca Cola. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And, and as those companies do evermore kind of like diverse and splintered advertising in different markets. It's, it's, I feel like there's there's a bright future in humans doing voiceover as well as the AI it's
Rolf Veldman
growing, it's growing it's the most the thing that grows the most which is why we have four examples of video on our on our on our roadmap is because I'm a reader myself, but people go more from reader to watch her to watching and from long form watching to short form watching it used to be read read a book, then you watch TV, then you watch you streamed series, but now series are too long, and you watch tick tock videos, is a bit of a hyperbolic flow. But there's a lot of content being created a lot of things being created on on educational spaces on inspirational spaces in advertising, that is now only video. I know that sounds obvious. But the amount of things that were written just a couple of years ago, the way that Google is changing, written form to video form all of that is is accelerating the need for more video more and that means more voiceover.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, there's a very interesting space I mean, in the world of audiobooks and things like that, which we're always you know, where I you know, I'm definitely a I don't read books anymore like I definitely just listen to audiobooks and love love it when I do but I am amazed at the the YouTube shorts phenomenon and and like everything getting shorter and shorter. Now this seems like Vine had the right idea like 10 years ago when it was like, slightly wrong. But I think that scares me about tick tock and it's just like how aggressive it is at at really wanting to eat your attention like it won't let you quit the app until you've watched like at least three videos just trying to get those hooks in and kind of kind of scares me and I know a lot of voiceover struggle with this like I do about about social media, and whether we need a presence on it and whether anyone gets any work through it because everyone's posting all the time about what they can do but I think I've only ever got one job through through social media and it was on LinkedIn and it's just it's doesn't seem to be a thing people hire voiceovers through. What would you say?
Rolf Veldman
It is, unfortunately, but it's hard to crack. Because you and this is where running your view as a business is hard. Like there's there's there's like four of my four or five Maybe even 10 might not know all of them places where you can specialize in vivo, you can go the agent route, or agency route. You can go the online marketplaces route, let's say, Okay, I want to be present on invoices are always on two, three, you can go into the creative community group, which is Tik Tok and other creative communities, make sure that people refer you, you can go direct marketing yourself, try to build your own brand. There's all these different places that you can go. But you used to be able to do all of them a bit. And that was enough. But now you have to really choose one or two and go at it. So those people who do focus all in on on Tiktok might not have such a good result always on three or vice versa. It's hard to do all of those things at once. But there is there's more like it. It's a referral system for a lot of people. So they do they do some people do do well on on places like tick tock and other forms.
Toby Ricketts
Very interesting. Well, I think we've been talking for about an hour, which was, which was my aim? Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you sort of want to tell people about or or discuss?
Rolf Veldman
No, I think I want to really hammer home that the the way that we've set up our booking functionality now for voice actors is to make sure that they can book they can get booked directly. And paying through the platform is always optional. But they're we're pushing it in part to make sure that our the algorithms that we have are more relevant than just the likes that we have. So yeah, help us improve it. But no, we're keep going on the same path.
Toby Ricketts
Yeah, cool. Fantastic. That sounds good. I also would encourage people to check out your about us page because it's got this wonderful collection of little gifts of all and we're all the people around the world and doing something like appropriate to the country. I think it's like a really a really nice bit of the site assembled grown before across before so
Rolf Veldman
yeah, it's a bit hidden, but it's one of my favorite pages, a lot of gifts.
Toby Ricketts
Absolutely. Well, I wish you all the best with the jetlag that you're currently suffering. Probably about four in the morning as far as your body is concerned.
Rolf Veldman
Yes and pretending to be awake.
Toby Ricketts
Did a good job. This was just a very scary dream that you can now wake up from
Rolf Veldman
this is my AI
Toby Ricketts
now, nice one hour. Thank you, Ralph. We'll catch you again maybe in 12 months. There will be great