David Ciccarelli on the Future of Voices.com using AI voices

A series of recent events sent the VO industry into a spin last week, culminating in voices.com revealing that it would be aggressively expanding into the area of AI voice, TTS or speech synthesis.

Many reports circulated that voices.com, due to a change in terms of service, were now able to train any voice model using demos, auditions and jobs uploaded to the platform.

I put the concerns of the VO community to the CEO of voices.com, David Ciccarelli - and these are his direct responses. This content is provided for information only, and for the purposes of fact-checking so that interested parties can make up their own minds.

Here is a transcript of the interview:

Toby Ricketts

This is VO life hosted by me Toby Ricketts. It's a podcast, which goes over all the things happening in the voice over world. We meet the people behind the voices, and the people behind the companies that employ the voices. And today we have a very special guest, David Ciccarelli from voices.com. Recently, we've had some controversial news that's come out about voices.com, which is in the area of AI. So welcome, David. Thanks for coming on the program and answering some questions today. Of

David Ciccarelli

course. Great to be here, Toby, you and I go way back. So happy to to chime in.

Toby Ricketts

Absolutely cool. I thought Firstly, I want to do a bit of a recap bit of a timeline about the history of AI voices. And I don't like calling them AI voices. And I've heard people say it's not AI voice it's nothing AI about it. All it is is text to speech or speech synthesis. But we will probably mention AI voices from time to time. So anyway, back in 1960s, IBM developed speech synthesis, you know, you got the Stephen Hawking voice, you can hear what it's saying, but it doesn't really sound like a human. Then in the 2010s we've got machine learning Alexa, Siri, Google come on the scene in 2014 11 and 16, respectively, they offer like dynamic speech so that you know the computer can generate some text and read what's on screen or read you know, commands etc. Then in 2020s, the voice models improve Google's taka Tron two comes out in 2017. And lots of sites launch using this as kind of a face plate and basically just using the API to generate speech and then selling it to the public. And this is the first idea that as voices as professional voices, there's some you know, there's this stuff doing a very bad job of what we're doing. But in the last two years, there's been huge investment into like, you know, in data purchase and mining for speech data on the internet, machine learning generative AI comes along, of course, Chet be GPT is the most recent edition of this in terms of like generating text and just getting hyper realistic passing the Turing test and really smashing through all those barriers that we thought would 10 years away. Then there's stuff in the in the visual field like Dali, mid journey, stable diffusion comes along, starts, you know, copying famous works of art, extending famous works of art as the most amazing thing where they can basically paint what the the original artists didn't. And, and now it's kind of crept this photo realism is kind of starting to creep into the world of professional voice. We've got things like 11 Labs back, we've even got people being replaced, like with AI, radio, and DJs. You know, effectively fake these, as you can't tell, are not human. Then suddenly, last week, all of this stuff happened. We had a new song released from one of your fellow countrymen, Drake, one of the famous most famous rappers in the world, except it wasn't Drake and the weekend, it was a song that was completely contrived using AI. X next. And a very interesting sort of sudden court battle ensued, which we'll get into a little bit in the interview, but it proved that there were holes in the copyright law when it came to copying people's voices with AI. There was a Wall Street Journal article that came out at the beginning of last week, which outlines how lots of voice of artists and a lot of the people I know and work with, how they're being stolen from, you know, old samples that have been hoovered up from around the internet, or previous jobs that they've done for clients, where the terms of service were changed, or something happened around that. A good friend of mine and host of The Pro Audio suite, Andrew Peters announced on his podcast the other week that he's been replaced by AI for one of his biggest gigs, which has been the voice of a network. I got interviewed late last week about about how my voice had been stolen. And I was suddenly like, has it and I looked into Yes, it had I've been I've been copied on the internet. And then right into the middle of this whole fray like all this is going on. And then the voices.com announces the purchase of voices.ai. And and you updated your terms of service. And this is where everyone the internet went crazy for a second, lots of fires were started, pitchforks were grabbed and charged with and there was lots of lots of robust debate, shall we say around the internet about what it meant? What does this mean for me as voiceover, there's lots of existential crises going on with with with people's voice and their careers because like, you know, many people rely on this for their, for their bread that brings them to their house. So it mostly centers and this is my first question and mostly centered around the terms of service of voices.com. And we've covered this before in other discussions, because I remember when it changed, and it was like, you know, we own the voice for whatever we want all around the world in every jurisdiction. And that was correct me if I'm wrong, but that was basically so you can transfer the ownership from the voice to you to the client, so you can therefore Chase pregnant. That's it in a nutshell, right?

David Ciccarelli

Yep. So if the client doesn't pay for any reason that we have some recourse to go after the client to say listen, you don't own it. We own it as a temporary kind of holding pattern. On behalf of the talent until you pay Yes. And then we dispersed the payment to the talent. So that was that was the background on that project.

Toby Ricketts

That's advice. I assume you've had lawyers have got involved, and also only these rights otherwise, we can't do our jobs. So but what people are saying is that that effectively does like it puts in writing that you can use it for all these purposes. And while VoiceOver is not in, like explicitly mentioned, it's not explicitly excluded, I guess. So my biggest question is, like, you've made statements basically saying, We will not use your voice for AI, we won't use demos, we won't use auditions and we won't use and the end clients are not allowed to use Final jobs. And this specifically stated that it's an AI job. Why can't you? You've said that in statements like blog posts, and you've said it, you know, on interviews, etc. But couldn't you incorporate that into the terms of service? Because that would put a lot of mine people's mind at ease?

David Ciccarelli

I you know, and the short answer is, yeah, we're going to, and I think that's what we've realized that it was maybe an omission, through, you know, realizing that the technology has kind of developed that quickly, that this is needed. And it's why we co create with the talent community. And so we have some terminology with the lawyers right now, I was hoping that I could get it, you know, if you will, approved prior to prior to our podcast, but I'm happy to kind of read it out, because I think it's the section here, that would be most helpful that it does, quote, does not permit voices to make or trained derivative works. And then might be asking, well, what's the derivative work, such as synthetic voices, or more commonly known as AI voices of any user generated content without the express consent of said user, ie the talent? And so that's, that's what we have, I think it was just, it's really just the call out because derivative works. You know, it could be a cut down or an edit or something. That's how I think initially, we're thinking of derivative works not to create a whole synthetic voice. So that's what's that's what's kind of in queue right now. Yeah, there's, I mean, we've never created an AI voice. From, you know, from a from a demo, from an audition and the finished product, it's owned by the client, if the clients paid for it, that's their ownership at that point. And nor do we have any plans to so this wasn't, this wasn't a difficult decision to make. It was, as I say, perhaps, an oversight and omission, mostly because we didn't recognize the speed of the in the development of the technology. And if there's concern that we're doing this, I'd rather dispel the concern and put it put it in writing. And I appreciate that I can, I can make pledges and statements, but it's, it's really the legally binding agreement, which the community wants and happy to oblige.

Toby Ricketts

Okay, cool. Does that also cover the fact that if I, you know, say, I do a, you know, a three page elearning, for for Microsoft, that then they own those files, once they've, once they've paid for it, and they have this files in their position, it's very easy for them to train something like a living labs on that on just, you know, three minutes or 10 minutes of audio, and to sound like my voice does anything in the terms of service prevent clients currently from using it for a different purpose than was hired for?

David Ciccarelli

It does similarly, how, and I'd have to kind of dig up the exact kind of section number, if you will. But certainly the intent is just like if you're going to have it for an audiobook, and that's presumably hours long, it's for an audiobook. It's not meant to train another system. And maybe in a more kind of practical use, you said, it's for a radio commercial, you don't get to transpose that and put it into an online audio ad and upload it to Spotify, and get, you know, a million listens that way. So this really does come down to the honor system of the client saying this is how I'm going to use it. Our responsibility is to ask the right questions, and capture what they're saying, in terms of usage, and ensuring that we communicate that through this system to the talent and let the talent decide. Yep, that's acceptable in terms of the use and the price. That's what I'm agreeing to. And yet, I think we can go a step further. And so next week, you know, there's there's a lot of these licenses that have been established. I've granted permission for my voice to be used for this medium for the next time period, 13 weeks or a year. And yet there isn't, you know, a log, if you will, a system and we move asked talent, how do you keep track of all that usage? And there's a phrase in the industry that the real money is made on the back end, it's not actually the initial particularly in broadcast work. It's not necessarily the initial creation. It's the ongoing usage of that for real successful campaigns that might go on for multiple years. And so we wanted to build a in what we're launching next week is a license management system, where the client To be able to see all the licenses that they've purchased. When it comes up for renewal, we'd ask them, I think it's like 30 days in advance. Are you still using this? Do you plan on using it? If so, would you like to renew your license? And then there's a request for quote, and so that they can ask the talent, hey, what would it cost to renew this license for, you know, and they can extend the time period. Or they can extend again, modified, perhaps the jurisdiction of the media, if you will. So it is a request for quote, but it's, it doesn't require an audition, and it doesn't require the delivery of another file. But that at least creates the system for that kind of ongoing usage, to be, you know, managed and monitor over

Toby Ricketts

time license extension. Exactly. It'd be lovely to see some kind of collaboration with eyespot. TV or one of the media monitoring platforms as well, so that it can actually, you know, because I know many people who found work that are still playing that should absolutely, so that's, that's exciting progress. I'm just going back to the Terms of Service, again, in terms of what because many people were, they were like, it happened on the same day announcing the AI voices and then changing the terms of service. And of course, someone who's, who's a bit worried about the career anyway, will leap to the conclusion that you change Terms of Service, so that you can enable you to train voice models for whatever, whatever, you've gone on the record saying that that obviously didn't happen. It was a kind of a minor change. I think they happen on the 24th do want to just outline people who, who didn't see the explanation for that.

David Ciccarelli

Sure. No, thanks. Thanks, Toby. The change on to the Terms of Service last week actually related to we've removed something from the terms of service, which related to language around the categories that we, you know, moved into, you know, we've always we've been doing for voiceover for more than 15 years, a couple years ago, we thought, Oh, well, you know, audio production is a natural extension, maybe music composition, or kind of custom music. And then translation, often scripts need to translate from English to French and Spanish and so forth. And so why don't we enable these additional creative services on voices.com, then we had lots of, you know, service providers, other talent in those other creative categories. But really getting the clients to think to go to voices.com. First for translation was a real struggle, even though they had, you know, maybe done some work with us in the past. So that was

Toby Ricketts

an experiment that you launched them didn't really work,

David Ciccarelli

exactly, we looked at, and I think we're a niche player and, and really excel at that. And I think that's something that we're recognizing, and so we should, you know, in all likelihood, embrace the strength of being a leader in voice. And you're right, it candidly didn't work as, as anticipated. So we thought, why maintain these because every, every new feature and iteration, we talked about whether it's licensing, or, you know, searching the search engine, we always have to ask, Well, how do we do that for translation? How do we do it for music, and it just slowed us down? Okay, so we decided to wind it down, remove the language, you're right. Coincidentally, had these are two completely unrelated items. Now, when we make a change to the Terms of Service, there's, there's three levels, okay. One is this fundamentally changes the nature of the agreement, the spirit of the agreement, if you will, between voices, and the clients or the talent, in which case, and that could be around pricing change, you know, cancellation clause refund policy, these kind of big pieces. And in that case, you've probably experienced on some sites, you'll land and it requires you to click or accept the agreement before you even continue. So one, this was far from that this was kind of saying this didn't work, we've removed this language, one level below that would say, Okay, we're going to inform you that something changed. And we'll describe kind of what it is. But in this situation, you know, and that's kind of like an email goes out, and people are informed. But you don't need to click to accept it just kind of breeze breeze through the lowest level would be it could be everything from a typo, to, you know, removing something innocuous that we're just not doing anymore, or a change of address or something that just needs to be a, you know, an update. Still, we go through that goes through kind of a, you know, a past with the lawyers internally and externally. And then we publish the new terms of service and archive, I think, which is above the standard of care archive, the previous version. So that's, that was really the level of change. In this in this Terms of Service, the sections that have been mentioned, they've actually been in there for over two years. So it's not like we added this new section. At that time. It's been there for two years.

Toby Ricketts

We did an interview on it at the time, actually, which I'll link in this video to prove that that's the case. Yeah, it's been a while the other kind of couple of legal questions while we're on the legal side. Which does hear where this exists is like, When will this new wording be added to the Terms of Service? People want to know that? Yeah, I

David Ciccarelli

listen if I could have it happened today? I certainly would. I mean, it went to them on Thursday, which was the April 28 or so. It's usually a week turnaround. It sounds you know, innocuous, just to add a couple words of like, trying to be more specific. But, you know, you know, the fact that we're even having this conversation shows that every word matters. And so just want to make sure that we've, we've gone through the process there. But because this is the commitment in saying, we're not going to do something this would, you know, be at that level of, of sending out an email, informing the community and describing in that email, Hey, here's, here's what changed. And here's, here's what's new and different as of this date.

Toby Ricketts

Okay, cool. And on the low question as well, someone brought up on one of the forums that, that you're based in Canada, and it's Canadian law, which governs your your terms of service, and which, which doesn't have any statutory performance rights provisions like in the US, and produces utilize work for hire doctrine there. And apparently isn't much so that we can do about it. This is this is the problem that's being seen around the world in various jurisdictions where, like, for example, that the Drake video where they found that they there wasn't actually any law to be able to prosecute this person, because then they've done anything wrong, according to the law. So is there is it something you've thought about in terms of like, is it always going to be governed by Canadian law where there's not as strong a copyright provisions in California law, for example? Like, how does that implement your your terms of service and your business model? Do you think we can sort of get what power clients have in this new AI world?

David Ciccarelli

I don't think it weakens it. I mean, we, as a Canadian entity, we do, you know, abide by Canadian law. The the new site, which again, we're really just standing up, is not another legal entity. voices.ai is really just a website at this point. It's not it's not a distinct legal entity. So it certainly would fall within Canadian law. And, you know, in the in the United States, the actual jurisdiction where most of the corporate work where a company maintains its corporate headquarters or entity is actually in Delaware, because there's so much precedent for case law in Delaware. So each state might operate differently. But if it's, you know, it Delaware has like the history and there's something unique about that space, it's not a very populous state at all,

Toby Ricketts

I had a podcast about that the other day about how it is like, it's all of the corporate laws are written by corporate lawyers. And literally, it's like, entirely closed off process. So it's basically like, you can do whatever you want in Delaware.

David Ciccarelli

That's, and that's where you if you were to incorporate a new business, it almost defaults to being in Delaware. Yeah, that's where you're Incorporated. You can operate really anywhere with with your office. But we're Canadian company. We've not viewed this as a hindrance in the past, and certainly hope not in the future, either.

Toby Ricketts

Okay, cool. That's so good. I guess just to round off that decision about because still people will have an issue with, you know, the terms of service that have been enforced for two years saying, you know, we can we can use, we can use this for whatever we want. There's Do you see there is any other way around that in terms of like being able to be the intermediary between voices and clients, you will always need that permission, if just expressly for the purposes of completing a commercial transaction? Is that your your official view? And there's there's sort of no other way? Because that does put a lot of people off, even though it's probably on other sites to be honest.

David Ciccarelli

Yeah, I mean, we've, I guess, in the absence of that, we it really doesn't give us any teeth to go after the clients, like how are we engaging the clients? I mean, I think the key difference is that we run a transactional platform, the money and the files are delivered through voices.com. Most from the best of my knowledge, most other voice kind of casting sites, really act is purely the matchmaker and say, Okay, go off to PayPal to figure out payment and send files by Dropbox or upload them to Google Drive. They're not handling the end to end. And so because we are, which is actually our patent that we hold in the US and Canada, which you know, we pervert, I guess properly referred to as sharpei. But there's a patent that's held on that. It really does require us to have that kind of end to end kind of coverage. And why which is why the language is a lot stronger there because we're facility transaction from the get go right through file from payment and file delivery as well.

Toby Ricketts

Interesting. It'll be interesting. If was 123 has changed, because they had been now, you know, trying to get as many talent through their platform on their, you know, them organizing the payment sites or their terms of service have changed. But I get back to our main topic. So voices.ai, you bought voices.ai? Was Was this? Was it just a name? Because, you know, I went to the site expecting demos like on speech alone there. I mean, there are 1001 ai voice sites now, because everyone wants to be the new, you know, center of artificial voice. But I was kind of disappointed in terms of it had lots of lots of statements like all the others and pictures, but you couldn't press play anywhere and hear the results, you could sign up for updates. Was it basically just a park domain that you bought? Or did you buy any technology along with that? Or any kind of data sets or anything like that?

David Ciccarelli

Yeah, no, I'm glad you brought that up. Because it was it was, it was really just a domain. Originally, it was just purely to be a defensive move. I mean, I wanted to acquire the domain, so that it didn't get into the wrong hands, ie a competitor, or maybe a new startup causes all kinds of confusion of, you know, hey, is this the site kind of looks and feels like you, there's actually even some quite some sites nowadays that are that are just voices, and then some something else, and people think that it's us. And so that I kind of saw that playing out. And I was like, well, maybe we should, you know, acquire this name, as the kind of ideal, I did what most people do, you just type it into the browser at the time, it was just simply a parked domain, which, which for those who are unfamiliar with this term of park domain, it means a website that is just hosted by the registrar, it's kind of a placeholder page, and it says, you know, website coming soon, something like that, and some contact information for the registrar, there was no, there was no site on it, there was no company or technology. In so after speaking with clients, though, you know, being someone I try to connect the dots on this type of thing, we've actually identified a new type of customer, which is that of the software developer, you know, on voices.com, mostly, it's creative producers, it's video producers, it's brand managers, marketing agencies, and, of course, small business owners as well, too. But this new persona, if you will, is that of the software developer, and these are people who were wanting to incorporate, you know, a synthetic voice into their product. And maybe it's for, you know, content that changes all the time. And therefore, you know, it's kind of a two way conversational assistant, or a chatbot. And so realizing and kind of identifying this new, you know, this new use case, if you will, and this new persona. At the same time, we were scheduled to attend an upcoming conference, on this very topic. I just felt, hey, why don't we soft launched this website, with this vision of actually creating a voice development platform. So a development platform is, you know, it's not really for the creative producer. It's somewhere where you get code snippets and documentation, and yes, through through code, you can access these type of AI generated voices. So if you go to, you know, Amazon Pali would be something for people to Google. It's the same type of voice development platform by Microsoft as yours manifest the same sort of thing. Exactly. Yeah. And so IP is basically it's really a tool set developers to create applications and seeing that, you know, chat right now, and is very popular, but it's really just tax base, that next evolution is going to be conversational, two way. And it's going to be voice based. And so I, you know, really just spotting an opportunity. So that's what this this site is there's you're right, there's no samples that you can play. It's really a join a waitlist, but we've been actually reaching out to those that have signed up and just said, Hey, what brought you to the site? Thanks for joining the waitlist, what is it that you're looking to build, because maybe we can help you sooner than later or when we co create with you, let's make sure that we're building the right thing. So there's 100 software developers on the list, and in certainly growing by a few every day, and you know, the future we're going to build with them as well, too.

Toby Ricketts

So you don't want to miss out on that. Because it's, it's clear that this is the direction that the world currently is heading in in terms of like heading voices. And you know, no one wants to miss that that piece of the pie, because we can see that it is going to be a big part. And I mean, we've been seeing it as voice artists for years, but didn't expect it to get this good this quickly. I mean, you'll be dragged into all of the debate that's raging at the moment, which is like it's large in the voice of Stockholm. It's mainly about copyright law. The Drake thing that I talked about earlier with the rapper, who you know released the song that he didn't actually sing at all, like they just sampled his voice, wrote a song and then wrapped it and then had their voice put over the top of it. And it highlighted all these these really interesting issues around copyright and the fact that like, No Copyright Act currently covers synthetic performances, just distributing copies of recordings. And so since AI voice recording is not a performance, given by the person who holds the copyright, it's a new, it's a new work independent. And so like lots of people are saying, well, this is, you know, the service. This basically allows people once they've got your voice likeness, as long as you're not performing it, and it's an AI performing it, then it's, it's, you know, the copyright belongs to the person who created the file so that in what ways I mean, this has been outside of the I don't know maybe what you've prepared for, but like, Have you identified ways to be a part of that debate? It's important now that we try and find a way that's equitable for voices to go forward and try and make some kind of living off off the synthetic voices they create. And you're going to be a big part of that, that discussion, given that you've got probably the one of the world's largest voice data sets, although you said you won't use it for for AI training? What are your thoughts around around? What's going to happen with copyrights? And how voices can keep control of their their voice?

David Ciccarelli

Yeah, well, to the best of my understanding, you really can't use someone's image or likeness, in for commercial purposes. Now that might be the difference is that that musical piece was done as almost like fan, a fan piece, it wasn't meant to generate revenue. Just like you can't take a picture of a celebrity, and then use it in an advertisement, right, without their permission, because you're using their image or likeness. Now, this is why we're gonna say quite sensitive about this, when a client would ask for a sound alike, like, are you doing an impression of someone? Or are you trying to impersonate them, because if you're impersonating you are really trying to be that image and likeness of that talent. Classic example is James Earl Jones. People would say like, I want you to sound like James Earl Jones. So are you putting it off as being them? That's who you hired? Or is it an impression, where it's more satirical, if you will, in its in its performance? It's so I think there is a fine line. However, you know, the law clearly needs to be updated to handle this, but probably that distinction is if it's for commercial commercial purposes, on voices in particular. You know, how can we maybe prevent I think, is it might be where, what you're alluding to, like, prevent the misuse of, perhaps someone's cloned voice. You know, a couple things right now, we don't allow clients to, you know, download the auditions, or sorry, the demos, you know, it's really hard to extract, you know, you can't just go in and like, go to Google Images and get every image that's available. Or some of these sites where you can like download on mass. We, if we see kind of like, bought like activity, we're going to put, you know, we have firewalls, we're putting up blocks, it's quickly. So these are kind of preventative.

Toby Ricketts

Just just just just to expand that theory, there was a debate a long time ago, and it still kind of goes on a bit about watermarking. Because you know, and I was shied away from watermarking, because, you know, you'd only read, you know, most of the scripts or whatever, not include the brand name or something. And that would be that would prevent them from using it effectively. But now that we're talking about the actual likeness of a voice, is I mean, if everywhere, if every demo had a slight watermark in it, it would be quite useful because then someone couldn't just go and like write a script that would go and harvest every sample of a page. For example,

David Ciccarelli

I've heard that on. Audio Jungle has this little whisper audio chuckles from whisper in the background, a lot of sites do that. If you recall, I actually think it was voice 123 A couple years ago did that and clients were just, you know, talent, were like, you're, you're deteriorating or degrading my voice, I want this demo. And clients in the audition were like, this is kind of useless, you know, like they might want to play with at a team meeting or a collaborative session when they're making those decisions. So you know, I've witnessed this a few times. We've contemplated that for, like for auditions, it's just becomes incredibly distracting. I think most clients have good intention of they're going to use this audition so they can make a decision and ultimately hire a talent about it. So I'm not sure and when it comes to an AI generated voice, this is something else really important, I think for the community to know and understand. The highest fidelity that this can be done right now is 22 kilohertz, which is kind of half the quote unquote broadcast quality. So I am having a hard time believing that big brand out there who's going to spend millions of dollars on airtime and media buy is going to use a degraded low fidelity. I mean, it would be like, you know, audio file it'd be like seeing a billboard with it's all pixelated or like a watermark on on it.

Toby Ricketts

So I think the content is more than that. It'll be used for the long tail audio like, like like audiobooks, you know, elearning industrials, basically industrials is where is where it's at, in terms of this new voice technology, because that doesn't really require the acting and the quality level, most of its watched on YouTube on phones. So really, like the quality is not as much of a barrier as I thought, I feel like commercial, and commercials will be safe for some time yet.

David Ciccarelli

I would agree with that

Toby Ricketts

it's the train, it's kind of the training grounds of voice over the, the stuff that you do, when you're you first start out that is, seems to be mostly in jeopardy. And for that quality doesn't matter as much. Because that used to be my argument was just like, you know, the speech synthesis models, they only sample at, you know, 2205 hertz. So, it's, it sounds to me as an audio engineer, like, it's not very good quality, but I think people watching on their phones and on YouTube videos just don't don't even perceive that. Right, quality is really amazed at how quality is dropped. For even for things like commercials, sometimes when people are recording stuff on their phones, or through the Blue Yeti mic or, you know, and and it's kind of deemed acceptable. Now, we're absolutely wouldn't have been five years ago. Yeah, so that is a bit of a problem, you know, in terms of people that the bar to, to acceptable audio is much lower than it was I think, even with with regard to the performance, because you do hear some YouTube videos that are clearly AI voice generated quite badly. And yet, it says hundreds and 1000s of them. So

David Ciccarelli

yeah, I mean, the genres, if you will, that I would almost describe as like, the applications or the uses, where, you know, voiceover might be impacted, or kind of is like might tend towards an AI voice. And I know, we're using that term kind of interchangeably with synthetic voice as well, too. But I would look at the spectrum of like informational versus emotional. And if it's just pure information, like turn by turn directions, the elevator, the parking garage, the airport announcements, I mean, it's very, basically public service announcements. Or, it's, as you describe this kind of corporate training material, where the person in the curriculum departments, you know, and human within human resources, and they're the curriculum designer, I mean, their mandate is to make the content accessible to the most people possible in that organization. So that there's a new compliance or safety video that's being produced, then they need to make it available in five different languages. And the whole thing does needs to be, you know, so that people of all walks of life, whether you have a and perhaps even disabilities can access that content in a lot of ways. It's purely an accessibility play that is being done here. And they don't unfortunately, have a lot of budget for it. And so the tendency can be that it's 100,000 words, and we're just going to have the generated text to speech voice, do this, rather than it gets in sometimes it's not even economically feasible for the talent who's going to who's going to do 100,000 words, for a few 100 bucks, no one is going to bother. So they're in a bit of a conundrum themselves to abide by accessibility, whether it's a law or a mandate within their organization, but then aren't given the appropriate budget. So how do they make those to fit? But basically, it's informational content. That can often be very high word count. Or on the other end of the spectrum, very low word count. Still informational. But it's, it's five or six words, it's almost, and I hope this comes out the right way. But it's such a short shelf life that the content has, you know, it's a one time social media video that, you know, once you've seen it in the feed, you don't want to see that again. I've seen and heard that video before. vapor? Well, exactly. And a lot of a lot of clients are like, producing 10 different variations of that video to see which one sticks, right, different calls to action, different script even. And how do we do this at scale? There's one advertiser that actually produced 2000 They hired a talent to do this 2000 variations of an ad. And it could it was different price points. 495 496-490-7595, five different calls to action Sign up today get started today. And then language depending on the device and the location that was used. It was all this, this whole matrix of all these different combinations,

Toby Ricketts

dynamic ads, I think they call those now is probably the way there is I think as well like they had so they kind of construct them on the fly, which is a very you know, it's an Interesting new form of media. And that kind of combines, like, kind of it's gotten outside the realms of advertising. It's more market research now isn't that amazing? So

David Ciccarelli

you just and marketing, the phrase of her recently is marketing is math, you know, people are going to create all of these assets, they're going to figure out through the numbers, which one works the best with the most about people, and then run with that. It's not just, it's not merely a creative decision, we're going to create variations, and then pick the winner, so to speak.

Toby Ricketts

Cool. Again, like with this new, you know, building voice models, so you've kind of gone out and said, You're going to be creating voice models, this is with individuals on on the voices.com platform. So you're not talking about kind of creating faceless models that are generated sort of out of thin air or out of out of large data sets, you're talking about specific voice models that people will own, still on your platform, and then you'll be the licensing agent for that, is that correct? Almost like a reseller,

David Ciccarelli

right, it's still your voice, but we are reselling that voice on your behalf. So I think this is how we're going to do this differently than maybe as you describe kind of the dozens of other startups that are that are out there. They're trying to aggregate data to create an anonymous, I refer to them as the mash up voices, it's like five different voices all at the same time, you can't really tell who it is, there's no attribution back to the talent. So if you really wanted to work with them for the big national campaign, you couldn't, because you don't know who it is. So how we can do this differently is that inviting to start 10 men and 10 women to have their voices cloned on voices.com. And it's done by professional voice actors. That way, the client can always hire, you know, the natural professional voice actor. But if they have some of these situations, what we're hearing of like, scratch tracks, it's a spec read, or just trying to get a sense of the video timing, these type of situations, or it's a test campaign, and before we go invest in the bigger national or deploy the big media spend, let's just see if we can get some quick feedback from the market, if you will, kind of that market research idea. So I don't So in those situations, you you hire the clone. Now the ideal state is you start with the clone and kind of it's it's almost like an upsell to the professional. But some maybe it maybe they're just realized up that ad campaign didn't work. No, I would rather have that client, start that journey@voices.com and be able to kind of reuse the term upgrade to working with with the Pro, rather than going to two or three different sites and trying to, you know, figure all that out. So I think there's a number of between the kind of like that, that spec test work. And then this dynamic nature of content, I think those are two real promising kind of new forms of media that previously are the types of jobs that weren't coming to voices.

Toby Ricketts

So just for clarity, because at the beginning that you said 10 Men 10 Women are going to have their voices sampled, it sounded like you were gonna put all those together to make a clone, but you're talking about 10 separate clones, male and female, and they would read and people will want to know this, that the people whose voices are sampled are free at any time to stop using that, and you won't own that they still have ownership of their Yeah,

David Ciccarelli

that's correct. I mean, there's, I mean, again, there's what's in it for us to say, No, you must stay on the website, we're gonna continue to use this, I just think it breaks, you know, trust in violation of everything that we're trying to achieve, which is if you want to participate, here's a new and different opportunity. If for some reason it doesn't work out, pricing or timing, or for whatever reason is, like, Great, we'll just, let's call it, you know, turn off that service and availability on your profile. So, you know, easy, you know, no harm, no foul, easy way to, to take the exit on that one.

Toby Ricketts

So just wrapping up, because I know we've taken a lot of your time today and thank you for for answering the questions. Like, like, Why do you think I'm, I'm always surprises that you guys sort of make a change. And then suddenly, everyone just like goes crazy, is what is it about voices.com that people just seem to get so mad about I know that sort of there's there's a bit of history where things didn't go right in the past, you've addressed it and I feel like you know, you've you've you've fairly addressed that. Is it just that people won't like, like, once the trust is broken, they'll never trust you again, or what's your sort of strategy for trying to make people feel better about the platform?

David Ciccarelli

You know, this this, it's really challenging because we often do things first. And when you do things First, there's unknowns because there's no precedent, right? There's not someone who's done this, you know, five times or you know, and in which case, those who are gonna say, the best I can do is communicate, be here on podcasts and interviews and videos, maintain a blog, let people know what we're up to. But there's actually a few venues that maybe others are unaware of, you know, I certainly don't operate in isolation. First and foremost, we have a great board of directors, who all of these type of decisions are run by that include a couple of independent board members, as well as our investors in so they're, you know, our intentions and incentives are aligned to make sure we're doing right by the business as well as the customers in which we serve. I also, you know, consult, if you will, with a CEO advisory group. So these are 20 voice actors, that from time to time, I'll preview ideas to say, hey, directionally, this is where we're gonna go. Or this is a decision we haven't made yet, but I wanted to bounce it off you. And those are one on one sessions that are held. And in addition to that, I've been hosting a number of what I call voices local, which are really just private events, you know, if I'm in a city or traveling to meet with clients, or again, at a board meeting, you know, gather people around for dinner, and we can go deep, these often go for three, four or five hours at a time. And, you know, there's, there's, there's nothing, you know, nothing off limits. It's a you know, and there's also no agenda for the evening. So anything goes often it's, it's definitely talking shot the whole night, and I try to answer questions, and maybe provide some clarity where possible. And that's really been, I feel, Toby, it's actually been quite helpful in the last couple of years, since putting in a real effort to be seen, and hopefully be heard. So, you know, yet another commitment is to continue up with those practices, because I do think they're making a difference.

Toby Ricketts

Cool. But David says early toward coming to a city near you. One final question, will there always be a place for human voices who own their own voices on your platforms, and you won't, you know, exploit them as it were, like,

David Ciccarelli

Oh, my goodness, I think this I think, the futures people because people buy and, and like to engage with other people, that we dragged some research around, like, well, what are the most popular voices, and it ended up being that people like to, you know, in terms of advertisements, like to buy from people who sound like them, which makes perfect sense, right? It's whether it's demographically or geographically in so that he's just going to need, you know, the human elements. There's things that are very difficult to replicate, if you will, like, and I know, we just say emotion is a bit of a catch all. But there's a lot that's, that can be unpacked there. Things like timing or comedic timing, or pause, what's the right amount of pause that it sounds natural, or even just a breath? You know, I think we tend to edit a lot of breath. So sometimes you need the breath or the sigh. And so I think there's absolutely a place for human voices on voices.com, it's likely going to be probably 99% of the activity for for quite a while because clients say yet well, I've looked at it, I've tried it, I can see some situations here and there. And maybe they get started with it. But I think there's continues to be a bright future for talent for years to come.

Toby Ricketts

Fantastic. Well, thank you very much for representing today and talking about the controversy. And I think we we got, you know, we've got through a good chunk of stuff there anything else that that you feel like people should know about your your current moves?

David Ciccarelli

No. Well, I think if anything, know that this, you know, we have good intent, we are here in in collaboration with the community. It might be cliche, but I've said this many times, our business truly is based upon shared success with the talent. When you thrive, that's when we do which is why we create the content, which is why we bring in the clients. So we were enthused, and we want to continue to work collaboratively with the community.

Toby Ricketts

And if people disagree with that, and think that those aren't your intentions, is there a way for them to get in touch? Like, what's the best way to actually

David Ciccarelli

I would love nothing more than people to send me an email, my personal emails, david@voices.com, it's pretty easy one to remember. And no matter how you feel, or what you're thinking, or you see something or hear something that doesn't sound quite right, I would welcome that, because that actually opens up the dialogue. What is what is heartbreaking is the assumptions that kind of lead to you know, and that are that are not really based upon fact, or reality, or assume kind of the worst, that becomes very challenging to navigate. And there's nothing more that I'd love than just to open a dialogue and let me hear the other side. And maybe it's an opportunity for us to improve or minimally course correct. So I would encourage that if you don't, if you don't feel that way, simply send me an email. Let's have a conversation.

Toby Ricketts

And I mean, it's true. I've sent you a number of jobs. where I've been like, Oh, this looks really dodgy. This is not a good look and you've looked into it and you've either stopped it or you've explained the situation and it has it is a good dialogue and like there was a there was a job about this AI stuff that we didn't get into on this time. But you know, it's yeah, if you have any concerns, then then email David and you must get a lot of email though. That email address

David Ciccarelli

I do. It's it's a little it's a little scary, but I chip away at it. I spend a lot of time just chipping away at but so please extend some patience and some grace but I'll get you an answer.

Toby Ricketts

Dave. It's it's really CEO of voices.com Thank you for fronting today and appearing here on vo life we will be sure to be in touch. If there's any other questions that the community wants answered.

David Ciccarelli

You got it thanks, Toby.

#StandingWithBev the Interview

Bev Standing is a premium voice artist from Canada with many years experience in the field. She was shocked to learn last month that her voice was being used by the social media giant TikTok so that users could make posts with audio saying anything they wanted in Bev's voice. But TikTok has never employed Bev for voiceover or sought permission or rights to use her voice. So how will this all playout?
In this interview we go deep into the issues around TTS and AI voices, and also find out more about Bev the voice artist. We navigate the Tech, the Business, and the Craft of VO and find out how and why Bev has found success.
Presented by http://oceania.gravyforthebrain.com and http://www.tobyrickettsvoiceover.com
To support Bev in her case visit https://www.gofundme.com/f/stand-with...

Here is a transcript of the interview:

Hello, and welcome to this edition of vo life and Gravy for the brain Oceania, the interview where I talk to people who are big in the voice industry, and are doing amazing things and basically trying to get a round up of what everyone's doing at the moment. And really the woman of the hour at the moment and voiceover land, is my friend and colleague Bev standing from Canada. Welcome to the to the podcast. Hello, thank you, Toby. And I, it's a thrill to be here. No worries at all. Thank you for coming. So you are based in Canada, you're one of the territory controllers for grading for the brain. And I had the big pleasure of talking with them. Graham Spicer, your colleague. You're both based in Canada. How are you guys going with COVID? At the moment, we're still in lockdown. But that's coming to an end, we're getting better. I think we still can't travel to a lot of places, but our vaccine rollout is speeding up a little bit. So we're getting high in the percentages of single doses. And we're working towards a double dose. So hopefully like well, life will return to somewhat normal again soon, I hope. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's, that's good. Especially, especially for us because it's summer. It's almost summer. So when you have months and months of cold weather, and you finally get nice weather, it'd be nice to go out. Absolutely. Yeah, it's not nice to be cooped up indoors with the with the warm weather is especially if you've been cooped up indoors already. So yeah, and life is certainly not normal for you at the moment with the recent some sort of revelations that that Tik Tok were using your voice illegally, effectively, because they had sort of got hold of it somehow. For people that hadn't that haven't kind of come across the story. And I have put put a few links so that people can but just give us a quick potted summary of you know, of how you first found out that they were doing this and sort of what the mechanics of that are. Sure. And I'm happy to because there's a really important message in all of this, so I'm happy to share it. Back in November, Bridget Reale, also with gravy for the brand sent me a video tik tok video through messenger and said, Is this your voice? And I went, Oh, yes, it is. And then she sent me another one. And so what about this one? And I went, Oh, that one's that my voice too. And then the next day, my daughter sent me one. And I went Oh, and then someone else in the family sent me one. And it wasn't quite as polite. And I went Oh. And so I downloaded Tick Tock because I wasn't a tick tock user. And I figured out how to use the text to speech feature. And lo and behold, there I was. And I've had people recognize my voice and they go, but how do you how do you know it's you? Right? Like, that's not all you. I did a text to speech job three years ago where I read 10,000 sentences. And we'll just jump right in. For those of you that have used tic toc text to speech. I read 10,000 sentences like this. And this is the TIC Tock voice. And it is unmistakable. So I knew instantly where the voice had come from. The problem is Tick Tock is not my client. So the question is, how did they get it? I don't know. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because I mean, you as a as a sort of a relatively famous voiceover artist will have usually had people coming up to you and saying, Oh, is it your voice on this commercial? Is it your voice on this? I'm sure you get it as well, because I get it all the time. I'm like, it's not like it's not me. It doesn't mean anything. Like, sometimes it is making it. But I imagined it would have felt a little bit like the start of one of those conversations until it was like you say like the fourth person suddenly, you know, something's up. And the fourth person within 24 hours. Yeah, exactly. Like as soon as it started. People were messaging me. Yeah, that's terrifying. Especially when it could be that you're saying anything, you know, that's the text. And I was Yeah, yeah, it was and I and you want to pay me to say something? That's my choice. This is not my choice. Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I think, you know, I can sympathize as well as a voiceover artist. Because I in the last three years, I've done text to speech jobs as well, where you do read an awful lot of stuff in a particular voice. And, and it's, it's kind of long and grueling as well. I mean, the sentences you read are quite bizarre sometimes as well. So how to take us back to that moment that would that was not for Tick Tock that was for a different client. So it was three years ago, and it was for a company, a gentleman that contacted me directly. And he was in Edinburgh, Scotland. And I agreed to do the job. And I asked him what it was for and he said, translation us three languages and then dash US English and I went, I would love to be the voice of a translation. I knew it would be dissected. I knew it would be taken apart. I knew it would be a robotic interface for translation. So when it came out that I was the text to speech voice I went Wait a minute. That's That's not it. That's not What I agreed to, and again, tic tocs, not my clients. So you can't, you can't do it in the music industry, you can't do it in the art industry, you shouldn't be able to do it in the voice industry. And if they can do this, have they used it elsewhere? And I don't even know yet. Like, we don't know, they could have used your voice and you just haven't heard it yet. Yeah. And then it shows up one day without your knowledge or authorization. And it's just wrong. Absolutely. I mean, this is such an important case for all voiceover artists, because, you know, like I say, I've done at least two text to speech jobs, pro one of about that size, and one, you know, it's a bit smaller, for a very specific topic. But then if there is some kind of way that they can take what you've done, and then use it for anything, I mean, that's just, you know, that opens you up to all kinds of horrible things. So it's, I think this is a really important case. And we were all kind of waiting for this case, in a way because we knew how dangerous the text to speech, like, the concept of it was that you could, you know, take someone saying something, and then like, the deep fakes, you know, you could just put up somewhere else saying something completely different, because the technology has reached that point. And so like, I mean, I certainly knew that there would be a case at some point of this, and I didn't know, I didn't know what's gonna be needed, you know? And I'm kind of happy, it's me, and I'll tell you why. I get to stand up. And maybe other people would have just gone Hey, I'm the voice of Tick Tock. Yay. But that wouldn't have helped anybody in the industry. So I've, I'm, I feel like, this was handed to me on a silver platter, because somewhere the universe went, she's gonna say something. Let it be her. I don't know. But I believe in standing up for what's right. And I believe in doing it in a positive way. I'm not bad mouthing anybody, I'm not throwing any negatives out there. This is technology. And when the world you know, I don't go back into this business. I don't think as far as you. I don't know, when you started. 1990? Probably, I mean, yeah, pre 2001 was the very first, okay. So when you started, you were going to studios, you'd go into auditions. And very, very quickly, it started, you could do some jobs from home. And people panicked, why do I don't have a home studio, we go into the studio, I don't know how to edit, the engineer does all that. And then the industry adjusted. And I think we're just at that point now, that technology is caught up. And we have to adjust. But if this didn't happen, the conversations about usage and the conversations about I mean, usage is always there, but not to the extent that we're looking at right now, we have to be really, really clear, when we do these jobs, you can't sell my voice, you can't use it for another app without my permission without talking to me and creating boundaries. And and whether you want to get paid for it or not. If it was something that you were passionate about, and you didn't care if you got paid, that's your choice, but it should be your choice that should be presented to you, we're selling this, we're you know, we're giving it to these people, and they want to use your voice. Now you get to have the conversation with that person, or that company. And I think this hopefully, will be the grounds that make this happened. Exactly. And yeah, I, I didn't really think about that. But it's it's kind of happening. there's a there's a few different facets to this and the effects in effect, because there's the kind of just the pure business angle of like, well, it's my property you use, you know, my property for your gain. So therefore, you know, I'm entitled to some of that that value. But also, like you said, the reputational angle, which I think is probably more striking, is with the TTS is that they can bring your brand into disrepute. Right? And you know that that that's kind of a violation of your of your integrity as a voiceover artist. Yeah, I have no say, and, and my brand is my choice, my say, my decisions, my everything. I'm an independent person, like business. And and you can't just go and change my logo, what you can't just go and use my voice and make it say whatever you want without my approval. Right? Yeah, it goes so much deeper than Oh, they used your voice, you should get paid. And, and I'm getting a bit of that, you know, oh, you just, it's all about the money just. And it's funny. One of the very first emails I got was extremely negative, and it's all about the money and I hope you lose and I hope it costs you 1000s and legal. Just put your voice back it's just a voice and I so my brain says this person just appreciated the fact that they liked this text to speech voice and they'd like it back. They just don't know how to say it nicely. That's true. And I don't know if you I mean, you would have seen the videos that are circulating on YouTube about like, there's so there's like millions of people saying bring back the the old Tick Tick Tock voice You know, there's so many memes floating around about it now. I haven't seen them all. I haven't really had time I've been completely overwhelmed with the attention. This is getting and My days are now what times my next interview. And I'm agreeing to that because the message is so important. Like I said, it's not about Bev getting justification and payment for what she did. That's this much of what this is all about. And I again, I got flowers from a friend, and she said, thanks for standing up for women everywhere. I mean, it doesn't matter how you look at it. This could have been somebody that would have rolled over and gone. Wow, I'm the voice of Tick Tock Isn't that great? And a statement, and it would have destroyed our industry. So I'm kind of happy that I've been put in this position and have the gumption to do to do this. But I don't do this alone. I do this with the entire voiceover industry. I can't believe the support I've gotten. That's brilliant. And like, all those reasons, though. Yeah, thank you on behalf of the industry, you know, for for, for taking this on, because it will it will take an awful lot of time. You know, you're putting yourself out there as the sort of the face of this campaign. And you've done it in a brilliant way. I have to say your branding on this has been excellent. The hashtag standing with beavers. Like is genius. I wish I thought of that. But I didn't. Actually somebody else came up with that. They also said you should do hashtag standing with Rob Rob. Rob's giggling Paglia is my lawyer. He is also a voice talent. So he understands the business. And he's located in the US where tic tocs offices are. So it all kind of and I knew Rob, so it fell into place. But the other one is, when this goes to litigation, and there's some rules in place, which I hope happens, that that helps everybody work together in a really cohesive way. It's positive for both sides that they call it the standing clause. Got the perfect name? Absolutely. No. That said, That's fantastic. And the other question I've heard sort of secret is whether they you know, the unions have been worried about this, you know, sag AFTRA and some of the other unions in terms of who who control who works in voice and who's paid what, etc. But they haven't really made a big thing of it. And hopefully, they can kind of join this in a way or somehow exert the what influence they do have into I'm hoping they stand up. And yeah, I'm not a union member. I'm not, it's sag AFTRA in Canada. And after in the States, I believe, and I'm neither, but I hope they stand up and listen, because there is some talk to this. And there's going to be more and more companies that hire you to do your thing. And then you might control your voice, you might have the say, of who can use it. And that would be wonderful. And it would be like a passive income, I would think the Union would be part of it want to be part of that. You know, so I'm hoping, again, by being this public and accepting requests for interviews and talking more to people and spreading the word that it's not just about getting paid for your work. It's so much bigger, I'm hoping the union does step in and go You're right, we can lend a voice because everyone I've talked to whether they're union talent or not, whether they're agents, casting directors, they're all we're behind you 100%. They may just be waiting to see what happens with it. But at some point, I'm hoping that that they join the support, at least, you know, by verbally saying we're behind you on this one. Yeah, brilliant, because it would be good, it would be fantastic, that support it. Another thing about TTS that's been kind of like the flip side of it, because it has been kind of doom and gloom, like the robots going to take our jobs like every other industry. But there has been the one the TTS companies I've been talking to. there's a there's a couple of them who are really kind of doing it for the voiceover angle. And what they've described is that they're developing like voice print technology. So you can effectively Copyright The sound of your voice when it comes to AI. But not only that, but they're trying to design platforms so that, like voice actors, like me, and you can go on and effectively create like a like a costume if you like, which is like a character in a voice game. So you'll create a character and then say a bunch of different words to make that character real. And then they can make that character in the game, say anything they want, and they pay you like per character or per player or something like that. So there are some glimmers of hope that technology could also be the solution in terms of having these digital voice prints and the ability to have basically like it like a pay to play. But for your TTS voice, which alone It will you will Oh yeah. And that's that's where this passive income will come by. And again, it comes to us to be in a studio then you had to figure out how to be at home now we have to figure out how to work with them. And those are the companies I'd be happy to talk to you because they get it they get that it is your product and that you should be paid for the work you do but they want to work with you on this and technology is going that way. Why not make it work and stop the pushback? Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Like they need the voices originally. In order to make this work. And if they get this terrible reputation, it's not going to work in their best interest. No. And I've also heard for video games and stuff, they'd be using that for more background, characters and stuff, as opposed to the main characters are still going to be voice actors. But but the, you know, the grunting teacher in the side that gets pushed out of the way in the grocery store might very well be an AI voice that we've created. Yeah. And you would, you would be told that it's there using your voice and you would be paid for it might not be much compared to, you know, an actual voice job. But your hard work of creating the voice itself, because it can be taxing would be done. Yeah, absolutely. I, I know from one of the TTS jobs I did, where I set it was over like one Christmas, and I had to do so like five hours recording a day. And it was, it was very challenging, because it really, it puts you in some kind of weird mindset. And in the end, the whole thing fell over and I never got anything for it was a real shame. Now, do you know that? Well, it's very suspicious. Now. It's terrible. I need to know where because that's the thing about data, isn't it? So copyable, and it's so duplicatable. That, that is where the problem is talking to the guy who's the voice of the was the original voice of Google in the UK. And met him at the one voice conference in 2018. I think it was, and he did a talk there about how he got I think, like 500 pounds or something just ridiculous and signed sort of is right away. Before text to speech was even a glimmer on the horizon. It was you know, like it he literally didn't it was like a science experiment could have at that time, but but did sign has happened. So it's right away. And and now like, wherever I hear, you know, someone's GPS, and it's like, turn right in 34 meters. I was odd is that guy again? He's like, he's omnipresent. And so hard to extricate yourself once you've once you've gone down that route? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think this was brought to light in, in North America with Siri, originally, when she was recorded and didn't know that this was what it was going to be for. So you know, all these things coming out and speaking loud and proud about, you know, you can't do this is a wake up call to the people that are doing it. And I and I think as long as it's, we can make some differences in the industry and get the ground rules set, it's just not going to be an issue in AI is going to exist. And alongside voice talent, and I always say, you can have a good video, or you can have a luxurious, you know, Jaguar driving down the street, or you can drive a I don't want to be little any car, but a less expensive car. Or you can have a luxury car, and the less expensive cars, your AI voice. But you might never get that humanization of the luxury car that's not going to go away. So I don't think that our jobs are going to go away. I think they're going to change. But we need to change with them. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, flexibility is the key, isn't it? You know, that's that's the same for any kind of ecosystem is that you you want to be you want to move with the environment. That's the whole thing about evolution is that you know, the you try a bunch of different things and then go with the one that gives you the best results sort of going forward. So we do have to turn it, turn it into the voiceover district. I mean, we take our training we do we do our coaching, we come up with a commercial demo. And you know, what start says, buy this product introducing has turned into this, you know, oh, you should you should just try it. It's and it's like, wait a minute, I didn't train like that two years ago. So we're constantly learning and training and growing and staying up on the trends and beating the trends and, and doing all those things. And this is no different. It's just how to make it work. Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of trends, and moving a little bit sideways on topics, I've noticed that that briefs that come through now, and sort of you know, these things from agents, especially in the States, there's and I know agents have been talking about this, but the fact that they now say, you know, this, here's the fee, $3,000, whatever, this includes all lifts all versions or cuts, bah, bah, bah, you know, this is 60, a 30, or 15, or six and a five. And that's all included in the fee. And we can make other ones that we don't have to pay you. And it's kind of like halfway to the TTS, they've got a real voice to do it. But they're basically like, anything you say in the session can be used to make any other work at any time. And I recently had a client who came back and said, like, I did some kind of commercial, you know, six months ago, and they said, Oh, we've got to pick up on that commission. I was like, pickup, it's a bit late for pickup. It's, you know, it's been six months. And it was like their script was like they changed the price or they there was a new offer. I was like, This is not this isn't a pickup. This is a new work. This is this is the next stage in the campaign. You can't call this a pickup and then I just see that there are these these inroads that people are trying to get to sort of, you know, make it cheaper. And it's important that we are aware of them and kind of, you know, and realize when our value has kind of been hijacked. Well, they wouldn't say it if let's just say it was a television commercial or radio commercial. They don't go to the people and go Oh, you know what? We're just going to make a minor change and keep running this for 13 weeks they go, you don't have to change anything. But if you want to run it for 30 more weeks, it's going to cost you. And it's the same on the other side, and you change the price. It's a new spot. It's a new spot. Yeah, it's a new work, isn't it. But it's interesting that this complements now of, you've got, I mean, you've got more than this, but you've you've got two different types of voice buyers, the ones who are like small business owners who have never dealt with the industry before, and they've maybe just bought things from the supermarket, or employed, you know, tradespeople or whatever. And then they sort of advertising agencies who have a much more used to the kind of licensing model, etc. And it's sometimes quite, you know, there's quite a lot of education that needs to happen, especially on those kind of lower paid sort of more self service gigs on the pay to place, especially when when people want to reuse things or, or make modifications. Have you found that with that you have to educate a lot more? Yes. Yes, you know, you change your proposals on online castings just say, you know, this, this, this price that I'm quoting, needs to be discussed further with regards to usage, and we just need to put it in there. And so here's the thing, you can have a contract, and you can have an email agreement, and they are both legally binding. So if you put something in your proposal, and they hire you, they've read that, that counts as an agreement. So you've opened the door to a discussion that can be held up in a court of law. So maybe, that's pretty interesting, too, because one of my big things has been with the pay to plays, is to put in Yeah, as you say, like, like, this is an indicative cost, you know, it's going to be confirmed when I know who the client is, when or the usage, etc, etc. Because I did get burnt, you know, a few years ago with, you know, people saying, I've got a little corporate video, you know, can you do this, and then it turns out, it's, you know, for Facebook, and you find it in the session with the client. And so, you know, that's right. There's all kinds of awkward things that go on like that, where it's just, you know, I want to try and avoid that in the future. So well, and and that's part of it too, just because Facebook's putting together a little tiny video, doesn't mean it's going to cost any more or less than the guy down the street who's starting his own business. But it comes down to Media Buy, and they're paying 1000s of dollars for to be seen around the world, you kind of get a piece of that, right? Like, so, when a big company puts it together, they have a huge budget, and the voiceover is part of that budget, you get somebody working out of their basement that's trying to make a living for Joe's burgers on the corner, a different story, and how, why would you advertise Joe's burger on the corner, a small town in another country, you just wouldn't. So you have to look at the details, or at least ask what the details are? Where exactly is this gonna be aired? When I love the line? It's just online. It's just gonna be an online video. Oh, so the whole world is gonna see this is what you're saying? Right? It's different. If you do a landing page, I'm going to grab you for the brain, you know, Oceania? Well, that's where it's going to get seen. Yeah, but if I say it's for Honda, it can be seen anywhere around the world. Exactly. That's exactly it. So and the interesting thing is, as well with, and I've gone through this journey with royalties, in terms of, you know, you do with video for sort of a big company, that that they say is like what's only gonna be organic for 13 weeks kind of thing. But the thing is, once you post something on the internet, it never gets taken down. Like there's always a copy somewhere. So effectively, it's not really moral for you to charge them until the day you die for that, that thing that they're not really using anymore, but it will still be on the internet. So there's an interesting balance to be struck there as well. Yes, one of the things I always think of is in commercial products, a lot of products get changed very quickly. So it's something to be concerned, especially if there's a price in there. And that's where an important any script changes will ish will warrant a new session fee or whatever, a new cycle, new 13 week fee for this like you have to. So again, the terms need to be further clarified prior to accepting this job is all you have to say and then get it in writing, whether it be an email or written out contract, but something right, so I'm going to transition into the sort of the more and more finding out more you about the you as a voiceover artist. And I like to sort of put there's this kind of three like a Venn diagram, there's three different bits of voiceover, there's the business, the tech and the craft. And my first question was, actually, funnily enough beautiful segue is how do you price voiceover in terms of the business of your voiceover? And has it been something that you've sort of learned how to do just like you learn how to operate your equipment and just how you learn to use your voice? And like, how do you go about now? Do you have a fixed rate card? Or do you go off the industry? rate cards? How does it all work? Use the gravy for the brain rate guide is actually what I do. I'm one of those people that I could sell you the moon but as soon as you asked me how much I go, well, it's it. It's only $2,499. But you know what I'll give you about 2003. I stumbled my way through it if you have to ask me in person. So I'm happy to say the industry standard rate for a spot like this for this much usage, according to is this much. And I don't have a rate guide per se. Like one that's that's etched in stone that's on my website or anything. So I do you have to kind of get a feel of the client and how many people are involved and how long that's going to be? And is it regional? Is it local? Is it national? There's so many different things. So I don't want to have anything etched in stone. But a lot of times, if it's if it's someone that's reached out to me and says, hey, I've got this thing, and I go, Well, that sounds really interesting. Can you give me a few big details? And what's your budget? totally right. And then I can have something to work with. If they come back with. They go, well, it's just a little video. Well, nothing is just a little video. This is exciting, and I want to work with you. But I need to know where it's like, just keep prying them for information until they give you a number. And then you can go Oh, I was only going to church. Okay, let's, I can work with this. I'm not going to bill you your top because I wouldn't have. But I'm certainly not going to build you my bottom because it wants more than that because of the description you've given me. So how to bid. It's a learning curve. It really is. But we do have guides to use. And I'm happy to use them. And we try to keep them current as times you're changing. Yeah, wasn't it keeping that that that price, but it's almost like the there's so many different ways that even in different territories and and in countries that people charge like the whole British system with the BSF with the basic studio fee and like anything industrial is just done for 250 pounds an hour. And and the thing is like the British system, it bugs me how it is time based. So if you're a rubbish voiceover artist, and it takes you five hours to get through it, as opposed to three hours, you get paid less. How does that work? Or if you're really good, you can do it in about three and a half minutes. I've read it edited and off the go. Yeah, it is funny. And I find in Canada, if you say in perpetuity, it just doesn't seem to hold as much concern. We're certainly not a small country. But it just doesn't seem to I don't whether they don't use it as much. In the US. Absolutely. It's like you say in perpetuity and you go and no, I'm not doing it. Right. Okay, so are you saying from a client perspective, or from the voice talent perspective about from from what I see, even when I see it from my agents, they don't like it. But if it's a Canadian based job, it just doesn't have the longevity that that other places seem to? I won't say that's necessarily across the board in every field. But it's not as alarming as when you see in perpetuity, say in the United States. Yeah, absolutely. Where you hear about people, you know that then? And they're remaking commercials or something? And like we were talking earlier with the same campaign later on? Yeah, so I haven't seen as much concern. I mean, I try to say, and I certainly my agent in Canada tries to say no, no, no, but it just doesn't seem to be, it doesn't carry as much weight as it does elsewhere. It seems. That's interesting, isn't it? Yeah. And that word in perpetuity has been quite a recent phenomenon. And I can understand why with big corporations, they want to make sure that nothing's going to sting them in three years time, you know, their company gets sold to someone else, and suddenly, they've got this bill for, you know, huge amount. So I can see the business case of why it is. But I mean, for me, it's been, like, I basically, you know, I charge if it's organic on the internet, and no paid placement, then effectively, you get an in perpetuity license, because it's just sitting on the internet, and if people see it then go on, and it's based on sort of company size, but if there is a media buy, then obviously, you know, you want a piece of that media for if someone's spending a million dollars to place it, then you know, it's got to be relative to that, because you're they're obviously getting more value from you. But it's not just that it's if it's sitting on the internet and somebody's website, and the only time you're going to go there is if you really need to research that little thing. That's not really going to interfere with you doing anything with their competition. But when it's out there, and it's Media Buy and it's thrown in your face, and it's you know, buy this drink or buy this burger or whatever shop here it's like that can be detrimental to your work trying to get work elsewhere. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it's also the same thing like I used to say you know, if it's a big huge company like Microsoft, you know, it's got to be absolute top dollar. But there's a difference between Microsoft making an above the line campaign for like Microsoft that everyone in the world will see. And, and like a tiny how to video on one of their servers, deep, you know, buried in one of their service techs that may be five engineers are gonna see in their life, you know, it is technically for Microsoft, but there's a big difference in viewership and reach. Yes, and I've done a lot of internal work for very big companies. I just don't say that because you won't ever see it. Unless you're an employee of that company, yeah, so I know I did it. I don't need anyone else to know I did it. It's just no one's gonna ever see it unless you work there. Yeah. How do you keep track of royalties? Do you have a system? CRM, I have a very basic CRM that. And honestly, if I have to refresh, like, you know, it's been a year, it's in my calendar. About three weeks prior to the term, it comes up with the client information, the job, the date of the email, and I'll fire off an email directly. That's great idea. Yeah, that's something that I'm probably that's the, I'm the worst at that. In the world. It's hard. Yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's funny, I don't have half a dozen clients that pay me large amounts of money to do their spots. But I have a large number of clients that send me a lot of work, and constantly new ones through online casting sites or word of mouth, and it does get challenging, and I would bet I've probably missed one or two. I actually had a love, you know, relationships with your clients are huge. Two weeks ago, I got an email just just after this. tic toc thing hit I got an email going, oh, by the way, can you send me an invoice? We're not renewing until October, but we want to make sure we've got this down. Okay. Thank you. I can't one last thing to do or not September's so exactly does happen. Yeah. And then there are some really good clients. Usually the big agencies are actually really good at that, where they will send you an email like three months out saying please invoices for you know, for $1,000. for the, for the you know, the the rights to use the on your voice ongoing, which is fantastic. It's so good that they respect that integrity. So a calendar, when you're starting out is easily just just put it on the date, you need to refresh it, and it'll fire you off or reminder, hey, you need to contact these people. Yeah, that's a great idea. I need to start doing that. pay to play as you mentioned them to support online casting sites. How sort of what percentage of your business do you get from Peter plates? Because it's a big question, especially beginner talent sort of get a bit. They feel like should I join pay to place and well, so my history is, when I first started, I was able to get my very first job off a pay to play often on my casting site. And then I got another one. And then I got another one. And that was really, almost the only place I was getting work. But then because I had some work, I was able to get an agent. So when I think of people, should I or shouldn't I? The answer's yes. Especially with online castings. Now, I mean, there's so much discussion about them, you can find out what's right, what's good, what's bad. There's different layers. So do what different levels you can do, what, what you can afford. But, and I and I say this, so I think some people say that this shouldn't say this, I use, I used online casting sites to practice, but you get every script that comes across your desk that you qualify for. Now, if your tags are wrong, you might not really qualify it. Or if the client hasn't ticked the boxes correctly, you might not really qualify for it. But it doesn't hurt to read it. You're still training, you're still learning, read it a bunch of times read the description. And if you go, No, I didn't get it, just hit delete, you don't have to send it because you said I'd read the script. But it's so for that reason, it's a good practice. It's good to get in and see how quickly you can get into character and get into, you know, the person who's telling this message and all those things. And and then you kind of go, you know what, I think I'd be really good at explainer videos or, you know what I think I should pursue animate. But how do you know? I think to me, it's a great way to spend an hour a day just looking at scripts on online casting sites, because where else do you get that kind of exposure? handed to you sitting at home? Yeah, it's so true. I I say exactly. To my students that, you know, it's a there's a potential of getting jobs, but it's also just fantastic practice with real world scripts. And not only that, but the fact that you even if you don't get the job, you have still read for someone who is going to cast more voices in the future, luckily, and they might keep you in mind. And Oh, absolutely. I've definitely got jobs off the back of not getting other jobs, if you know what I mean? Well, and it always had doesn't always happen that the person that's listening to your audition may not be the hiring person and they come back with, you know, I can't tell you how many times this has happened. I absolutely loved your read, I loved your audition, the client went with somebody else, but I'm going to put you on my roster or I'm going to, you know, keep you in mind for the next time or I favored you so that I'll find you next time. It did leads to work, always down the road. But as I said, if you really read it and go, No, just hit Delete. Just don't submit And it's a great place. And not only that you're reading the direction that is current and trending. And that's important. Because remember when I said at the beginning, you train and do all this, but then things change, you got to change with it. And if you were to go into a studio and they said, we'll do this, and this and you go, I don't even know what you're talking about. You have to know what they're talking about. You have to know what they're looking for. Part of the part of the gig. Yeah, it is. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so which which pay to place do you go to if you name names, which names I'm on? I'm on voice 123 and have been for years. I started on voices.com. And I was doing extremely well. They changed their terms of service. So I left. I have not go back. I have a free profile there because it doesn't hurt to be found. Yeah, but I don't actually do any work there. And but delgo voice realm and vo planet. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, there's me. There's so many it's it's, and I feel like a new one starts each week. You know, it's like, oh, and cast voices. I just joined cast. Yeah. Oh, and I'm on voiceovers to Gosh, I'm on a lot. It but I have a I mean, if I don't work, I stopped renewing. And I booked on all of them. So yeah, yeah, fair enough. It's good. And it's also good for your Google SEO. Of course, anytime that your name is associated with the word VoiceOver on a different site and points back to you. That's a good thing. Yeah. It doesn't hurt to be found. And if you can put a free profile out there and you have a legitimate demo to do it be a free profile. It's just someone to hear, you know, it's a place to be found. Yeah, I think it's a good thing. And online casting keeps changing. And if if they change their terms of service, and you don't agree with them just walk away. Fair enough. What was that read their terms? the terms of service with voices.com was at the sort of we own all your demos, part of it. Yeah, that was kind of it back there. They they, they had and this goes back, but they actually had a clause in there at some point that said that voices.com owns your audio and can reproduce it for any purpose. what not, this isn't the right wording, but we reproduce it for anything, they want it no renumeration to the talent. And that's when I walked away. I don't think that clauses in there now but then they bought an AI company. And I just went, I got it. I'm on six other sites. So we're good. And you do what we see. And the final question in the comment business section is, how do you think it's important to have a sort of a marketing strategy as a voiceover, you know, outside of your agents in the pay to plays that you're actually looking for work yourself? And what do you do in that regard? Yes, it's important. Trust me, I had no business experience whatsoever when I started this, and I had no, I, I had nine years at marketing, but I was marketing a multidisciplinary engineering firm, doing whatever they told me to do. And when they said, Go, Go talk about yourself and say how great you are, I went, ah, I know, I can't do this. So I, I do a lot of reading. I use LinkedIn, I use Facebook for pretty much business purposes only. I think if you looked at all my personal references, you'd come up with family of 10, an ex colleagues from jobs I've held in the past, maybe another 20, and the rest of voiceover people or clients or but I think it's there's all kinds of ways to market yourself, I don't have somebody that does that. For me, I probably should. I'm a little afraid of marketing, but it's important to just be confident and share your demos, make sure that you do things on LinkedIn that show so here's a little tips like this, this is how you learn from the beginning on up in LinkedIn, when you reply to somebody, great job. Right, your name comes up. And a few little words about you. The better not be I work at a dry cleaners. If you're trying to get voiceover work. If you want to work for dry cleaners that you know get more people there, that's fine. But if you want to be a voice actor, you need to say, you know bad standing voiceover talent or voice actor voiceover it like whatever combination you want. But that's what they see. So you need to make sure that scene on every reply, LinkedIn, join the conversations. So I do that I joined groups, and don't talk about you. So that is a good marketing plan for me, because I don't like saying, I have great demos, I do a really good job I that I have trouble with that. So by joining in their conversation and saying, Well, how do you do that? And what does it mean when you say this? We're just getting involved with them. You make a response and they see that upstanding voice actor. If they want to reach out they will eventually Yeah, interesting. So good marketing. It's important, but it can be subtle. Yeah, yeah, totally. Well, thank you for that. So marking tip, that's fantastic. And let's pivot to the tech of voiceover. I can see you are located in your lovely, comfortable voiceover booth. It's good size that you constructed that in sort of in your house in your office, if you like. It is this is in a room that used to be a garage, my son in law built it for me. He's brilliant, looked on the internet and figured out how fantastic I got my door. Where's my dirt? My door is here from a secondhand store was in a frame. And it's an exterior door show, he said got all kinds of like, and it's an exterior tail door with double glass. Oh, fantastic. Yeah, that's what Yeah, yeah, that's brilliant. Yeah. So listen, and what kinds of soundproofing Do you have is that stuff that you've bought off the shelf? This was Graham Spicer love him, connected me with the chap who was building these frames, and they're just double walled, insulated, covered in fabric, two pieces of wood, but I also have to my booth is two walls. So let's drywall a little bit of space. Yep. Rock Solid insulation. Yeah. Little bit of space. Yeah, to send more drywall. And then on the outside as I have here is indoor outdoor carpeting. Kind of muffles. And I'm on a carpet on a concrete floor. Yeah, fantastic. I should have had a raised floor. No complaints. So it's any with concrete floors dimensions only when someone does some drilling, or there's a motor running or some air conditioning or something. I live in the country and all that stuff from the other side of my house, like the air conditioning and also on the other side. So I'm good. Oh, that's fantastic. Good job. Yeah. And what gear do you run? You've got a 4416. It looks like you did must use I have a 416. I have my very first Mike. Oh, yeah. Because I saw one of the interviews is that it's Audio Technica. 3035 I don't think they make them anymore. And that was a cute story. I walked into a place to get a microphone because I had done an audition on I was an inspector at the time. And I had a little handheld microphone. And I got asked to do a radio imaging spot. And I recorded in that and sent in the file. And the guy emailed me back and said, I hate to be the bearer of bad news. But I think there's something wrong with your mic. But what Mike? So I went to this little warehouse place it sold microphones and music equipment. And this really nice guy was helping me asking me what I was doing it for and hooked me up with this mic and a couple of other gadgets to keep it down. And when I asked him where I should pay, and he goes, Oh, I don't work here. I'm a sound engineer, go go over there. What's perfect? Yeah, and it was a great mic for years and years and years. This for 16 is maybe a year and a half old. And I went from that to a TLM 102. Yeah. And then I switched to this because I started traveling. And this travels a little better for my voice. Oh, they travel so well, that the 416 is so robust as well, like I've chucked it in a suitcase, gone right around the world with it and they just don't miss a beat and then they don't miss at all. There's no noise. Yeah, and they don't pick up the room as much. So you're in a hotel and you've got outside, it just doesn't get that the way that the other mics do something because they're a hypercardioid a shotgun. And so they just yeah, so this works for me. That's great. Same Same here, actually. Yeah. And I always recommend the 416 if people want a professional mic, because it's just does the business really well. And you and I love this. Don't know what it's called, but I love it. Yeah, that's an interesting pop filter. I haven't seen that before. But it's it's soft, like a soft steel, but it's got layers. Absolutely. It's like three layers there. And it's it's the first one I've seen that's rounded. So it actually kind of deflects the the the airwave that goes forward as opposed to actually just, you know, bounces off it because I've got these, this one here, this these round circles like the classic one. Yeah, I have a couple of those, too. I like this better. Yeah, I might see if I can get one of those. I'll send you the details. And it just slides right over the 416 with rubber bands. Oh, that's great. Please do please send me that. That's fantastic. I will send you the link. Are you you're kind of a tech whiz. Have you embraced the technical side of voiceover or more of a Luddite? Oh, I make check. No. Did I convince you even for a second. I learned what I needed to learn as I needed to learn it the same way I learned Microsoft Word and Excel and the computers when computers were first created. I learned what I needed to learn. So I started out learning how to silence a breath. And now I do pretty much everything on the fly and pretty quick, but it's repetition because I do a lot of auditions. So when I started out, I had a full time job but I would spend two to three hours a night trying to hone my craft and come up with these auditions and try and book a job and listen to a webinar and, you know, practice my scripts and you know, do whatever I needed to do and so good two to three hours every single night. And then if you got a job, you had to edit it. So I just got faster and faster and faster. And I'm, I studied classical music as a child. So I'm ambidextrous, with my fingers. So I guess maybe it came a little quicker than it's interesting. I trained myself to be ambidextrous, because I was doing again, I was doing so much editing on a pretty bad setup at the time that I ruined one of my wrists, and it was just so painful for me to edit. And I noticed that I was just, I just wasn't auditioning, because subconsciously, I didn't want the pain of having to edit them. So I realized that and I was like, I need to change what I'm doing. So I thought, well, I've ruined their hand. Let's start on this other hand. And so yeah, and it took takes about a week, and you have to tie your other hand behind your back. Because otherwise, when you're not concentrating your other hand goes and grabs the mouse, like if you're if you're trying to convert, which is really interesting, psychological phenomena. So I have two screens, I have one that has the audio up and one that has the script up and I'd be scrolling down on this side and editing with this side. And it's cool. Yeah. So yeah, I'm pretty quick. But again, baby steps. Yeah. And you guys are used to a Adobe Audition. Yeah. And I use the current ones, you can do a lot on the fly. But there's all kinds of shortcuts. And there's some great people out there. And there's a Facebook group for Adobe Audition. And just any group, I say go look at this group search to see if the questions been asked first. Yeah, and YouTube is your friend, you'd be amazed what you can learn still to this day, I go, Wow, where did that go? And so I google, where did this little shortcut go? And lo and behold, you'll find out so yeah, bit by bit. Yeah, totally. And to sort of final section about voiceover, which is the craft of voiceover, which is, which is kind of the area where people, you know, people who are new to the world or whatever, think this is the only area you know, outside of the tech and the business side of voiceover. But I guess it's the most important when you're when you're starting out and learning because you have to have a have a good voice and be able to interpret scripts in order to build the tech and the business behind it. So what do you think, makes a good voice? It's a big question. You're gonna love this, because this will tie the whole day together, emotion. Whether it's your emotion, whether you're channeling the emotion of somebody else, every word we speak, we speak with emotion, every conversation we have, we have emotion behind it, we have some sort of passion, some sort of connection. And if you can confine, if you can find connection to the words, you're speaking, you can have a strange voice and still have a beautiful voice. Because you'll get the message out there. Yeah, that's so true, isn't it? I mean, that's effectively what we're hired to do is move other people and, and connect with other people to communicate a message isn't that? That's the basis of it. Yeah. Oh, well, that's my that's my thought. That's a very good answer. And like, what are the what's the most important things that people should know when you know, because in recent years, especially people are like, I've heard about this voiceover thing, it sounds really easy and amazing, and I've got a good voice, and I'm going to go and do it. What are the most important things for people to know before they jump into a career with voiceover? I think with any career, it's a business. It's a business. First and foremost, you don't become a doctor without learning how to become a doctor. But if you can, if you can stick with it, and follow it step by step by step it is, in my opinion, the most fun career choice in the world. There's some pretty fun things out there, but you do something different every day, every hour, whether it's you, whether it's just auditioning, you're this person, then you're that person, then you're, you know, going through this emotion, and then you're marketing and then your the community is it's just the best. So if you can, if you can stick with it, and just find you in the the actual performance. And slowly, you didn't just get behind the wheel of a car and go on a highway. It's like just bit by bit by bit. You'll get it because getting up in the morning is not work. It's like, oh, the sun came up, I get to go do something today. I love it. There couldn't be anything more fun. Yeah, I totally agree. And that's the thing. You know, if you do love what you do, then you never work a day in your life. And I still don't really consider voiceover work. And I would do this even if I didn't require money. Because exactly, it's such a creative outlet. And the people are wonderful. I've been in a ton of different jobs throughout my life and the community the support, that it's just such a happy place to be. I couldn't think of anything better. Absolutely. That's fantastic. And do you think anyone can be a good voiceover? Or do you think it is quite a sort of a niche occupation that only suits a few people? I don't think everybody can be a voice actor. I think more people I can be than they perhaps think they can be. It's hard. It's it's a lot of work and time and commitment. And if you're finding it, if you're finding it interesting and enjoying it, then I think there's a really good chance. And and I'm like you, I'm a territory controller in Canada. And we're mentoring people. And sometimes, you know, you'll get someone that it'll come across your desk, and they'll read and you go, huh. But after a while, when they start to get it, you think even with that voice, it's just so unique. It's so different. Absolutely. They just have to get beyond the I'm reading us script. Totally. Yeah. And there is a huge shift in the industry, that the briefs coming through that I mean, all of the scripts that I see now say, not an announcer can't sound like a voiceover wanted to sound like a regular person, you know, but they just have to, like you say, not sound like they are in a studio reading a script. That's right. Yeah. Arms and eyes and pauses and all those things that listen, when you talk. Yeah, if you can sound like that. You can do this. That's it's an art. But it you know, that's why we take lessons. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And do you do characters as well as quote unquote, straight voiceover I still considered straight voiceover character, kind of. I know what you're saying. I have. I don't as a rule, do video games and whatnot. But I mean, the last job I did was a troll. I was an old lady troll in a Fitz conservatory in Philadelphia. Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is the state Pennsylvania. Sorry, I'm Canadian. I just a moment there. Okay, we'll go back. Yeah. And, and so on the age old lady that you have to answer these questions to. And I've done some little kids stuff and whatnot. And I yeah, I've done like witchy things for some video stuff, trailers and stuff, but it's not my main focus. And I've definitely found that because I kind of wanted to challenge myself a couple years ago, and I want to give the gaming thing ago without kind of having appreciation for the fact that you need to learn everything again, like it is like an entirely different industry. Like the marketing is different. The contacts are completely different. They're just the your studio setup even has to be a bit different for the whole the movement and the loud volume that that comes out, rather than a straight voiceover. So yeah, fascinating in terms of it's a completely parallel separate industry almost. It's a it's amazing it. I've watched a few videos on on, and I've been in a few training sessions at conferences and stuff for people that that do video games, and you're like, wow, is that how you do? I mean, they go into the session for four hours and do nothing but grunt Yeah, no, you have to die. there's a there's a gentleman, I'm friends with humans in Spain at the moment, but I think in one video game, he was killed 2412 times or something. And you have to sound different every time. Are you being killed with a gun, a knife, a car, a tree, a heart attack, like there's hundreds of ways to die, and you have to know how to do them all and then stand up and still laugh and be in that character. So it's a it's an art and look after your voice too. That's the hardest thing I find about gaming. It's just that the toll it takes on your voice? Well, that's where you have to that's where learning placement is huge. It is Yeah, it's like learning how to scream and use your voice properly. So we'll go back to tick tock a little less strenuous for that job anyway. Get the TTS to do it for you. That's right. What's your biggest your biggest job today apart from big that was picked up? Probably that Yeah. As far as what people have heard me, I've been in the Super Bowl, which is a big football thing in North America a couple of times, but again, just regionally. And I always say this the most. I did, I was a narrated one season of a TV show in Canada that didn't make it to season two, sadly. So I've done a lot of one offs kind of thing. But I think the one that that hits home for the most is I did a couple of commercials for Kraft. This is an original Kraft teddy bear from back in the 60s. Because my father was an advertising executive and he had the craft account. So this is the smoothie bear. This was my teddy bear growing up. So when I got hired to do the squirrel on the roof, is what it was about some guy jumping off a roof in a squirrel costume, but it was for craft and that was probably the nearest and dearest to my heart. I love you have such a person you have personal items in your voiceover studio and I found it common about lots of and I think it says a lot about our craft that we keep the most personal and emotionally connected things close to us when we're doing this work. It's kind of it helps with all your emotions. Yeah. You know, every every like I said, Every everything is an emotion every every time we speak, there's an emotion attached to it. And the little things you have j Michael Collins euro retreated the K club. I've never granted his buddy. But anyway, yes, I have all kinds of things. But it's important. So here's one this may, I don't know if this means anything to you. But in Canada, this comes out the puppy comes out on Remembrance Day and remembers the veterans. So do you need to pull out a heartstring? So that's here. That's all kinds of ways to that's such an interesting concept is to keep, like, yeah, you're like the the object which you have an emotional tie to there as your kind of emotional palette that you can draw on physically, as you're voicing something that's fascinating, and thought about that. It works for me. I mean, I've just got all of these like, I've got to select new disk toys, you know, like fidget thingies. But when I'm voicing and I used to click a pin, and of course that ruins your recording, so all these silent toys that I like kids toys like this, this squeeze gum stuff. I have a cloud. This I got this. I was at a conference for eLearning and training and whatnot. This was a giveaway and I loved it. It's just a cloud. But it's that same. You've got the client on the other gun. Can we just have that one more time? Fantastic. Oh, well, we we have reached out but it's been such a pleasure to talk to you today. And I wish you all the best with with your case against Tick Tock and again, thank you from the entire industry for you know, standing up for what is right and what we need to do going forward to ensure that we all have the a livelihood, and that we're all respected in that respect. So what are some ways that people can support you or sort of you know, get in touch or follow you on social media? It's pretty easy. Bev standing bevstanding.com twitter @Bevstanding Facebook: Bev standing Instagram Bev standing there is a prize is there? It's it's pretty simple. I didn't do anything fancy. There. I will say there is a GoFundMe that set up and that's to help cover legal fees if necessary. I tried not to let that happen. But too many people want to help and they felt that that was the only way they could. I will say that any money not used for legal fees will be donated to the Brad Venable Scholarship Fund. Brad Venable was an incredibly talented voice actor that passed away from COVID last year. So they have set up a scholarship for him in the US. And I have asked if I can donate anything not used to that. So either way it would go to a great and thank you for allowing me to, to use and abuse your platform to get this message out. Because I think it's a really important one is again, it's not about me just getting paid for the work I did. That's a plus. It's it's so much bigger. And it's important that everybody realize that this is what our industry is facing and we have to be on top of it in a positive, helpful, agreeable way to make it work for everybody. Let's not be difficult. Let's just make this work. Absolutely. Outstanding. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you, Toby.