Thinking of "dabbling" in voiceovers?

At least once a week I make the acquaintance of someone who, with a sincere if not serious look on their face, explains to me that they've been thinking about getting into VO, not to have a full-blown career, but to just dabble in it.

I've gotten pretty good now at thoroughly being able to stifle the burst of uncontrollable laughter that threatens to derail what is otherwise a pleasant conversation.

They have no idea that their little dream and those of millions of others are slowly, inexorably destroying the VO business.

Allow me to do some number-crunching for you. As I mentioned in a previous VO article, the talent supply/demand numbers are extremely imbalanced and skewed in such a way as to create aggressive downward pressure on the prices that talent are able to charge producers.

When a newbie enters the fray, especially by way of the so-called pay-to-play talent casting platforms, it weights the imbalance even further.

Then, since the producers are the ones setting the price they are willing to pay a talent on a VO job, and since the majority of talent are increasingly hungry and even desperate for work, the average price on a per-job basis creeps lower and lower with each passing year.

Actually, this isn't necessarily a deal-breaker for me as an established talent. However, newer so-called "modern" talent find it difficult to justify their recent expenditures to build a proper home studio and even procure the necessary gear for a mobile studio in the face of the scant work available to them as a result of the imbalance. So far, this dynamic has not impeded new talents' desire to get into the business.

The bigger problem for established talent and their agents/managers is the fact that the professional union voiceover industry is dying a slow death due to the attrition of older more experienced producers who have been replaced by younger cohorts inexperienced at procuring professional talent, and who are just as apt to book cheaper talent via the pay-to-play platforms than to go the agent route.

Indeed, the whole notion of professionalism in VO is devolving rapidly into something quite unrecognizable as more inexpensive and inexperienced talent find what little bit of work they can get with producers who are happy to hire them at these much lower prices.

A producer will always get what they pay for, but when pricing power is basically non-existent, the inevitable result is that, over time, the mean quality of the VO industry's overall performance will suffer dramatically.

That is an outcome that is unacceptable to many pro talent who are no longer getting adequately compensated for performing, and who will likely fade away quietly from the VO scene into more satisfying and rewarding endeavors.

Voiveover: May the odds be ever against you

Since 2000, there has been an interesting confluence of widely differing factors that has caused VO to become an unrecognizable industry:

- The VO strike against the AAAA agencies in 2000 is definitely the first domino in this evolving chain reaction. IIRC, the strike lasted 8 or 9 months, a duration that forced most ad agencies who hired strictly union talent to begin searching for high-caliber non-union talent. After all, the show must go on. This new habit of procuring non-union talent was not easily broken, and in fact, made it easy for advertisers to maintain in the face of 2 recessions and the ever-tightening squeeze by investors to bleed more earnings out of ad firms and companies that advertise.

- The proliferation of reasonably sophisticated audio recording/editing software was the next domino. For less than $500-$750, anyone could buy a mic, gear, and some simple acoustic treatment and put up a shingle.

- And, that they did by the thousands, as radio firms merged, gobbled, and otherwise grew in ways that led to the unemployment of well over 10,000 announcers who talked into a mic for a living.

In the good old days, 90% of the money in VO was earned by about 2-3% of the talent pool, which was reasonably sized at approx 100,000 people. Now, only 50% of the money is made by 10% of the talent pool, which has bloated to over 500,000 peeps. And the remaining 50% is earned by just a third of the remaining talent with a sizable 300,000 getting almost nothing, but still trying to stay in the business.

Make no mistake about it, VO -is- a business. Anyone who ignores this fact is not dealing in reality. Statistically, the odds of making it in VO are poorer than the odds for a millennial who is seeking work in their chosen discipline.

So... that leaves other motivations for wanting to do VO. To scratch an itch, perhaps. Or just to have some type of fun creative outlet.

In that case, carry on and enjoy yourself. But, don't get disappointed if you don't make more than a dime at it.