J Michael Collins: "P2Ps Are in DECLINE"

Paul (00:02.948)

JMC, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast. You're always generous with your time. And this time, you know, I got crazy and hit the record button. So thanks. We may or may not have had an incident earlier. Thanks. Thanks for being here. I kind of want to get to the meat of the matter. First of all, how's business for J. Michael Collins?

JMC (00:13.058)

Much obliged!

JMC (00:24.614)

Exhausting. It's exhausting, especially on a Tuesday. These are like my 16 hour days.

Paul (00:32.216)

God, now I feel worse about having you on, so...

JMC (00:35.859)

No, you're good. This is a welcome break.

Paul (00:38.944)

Well, it's good to hear that business is good because, you know, you and I both talked to a ton of people and I'm hearing probably for the first time in a very long time, maybe ever that anecdotally, and I haven't found any hard data on this, but most people are saying it's a down year, it's slow. Apparently not the case for you, but do you... Yeah.

JMC (00:59.326)

Well, I'll say this. I think it's not the best year for most people. And that does include me. I'm not down. I'm up. But I'm up less than I usually want to hit 10% year on year. And I'm probably going to be. October has been pretty hot, which has changed the outlook a little bit. I was thinking I was going to track up maybe 3% this year. Now I'm thinking more like 5. October's been a really good month. Which is, you know, it's interesting. It's a little unusual in that usually September

for me is when the fall season gets really hot. And this year it seemed like a month later, but I think what, you know, people have to remember there's a strike going on. There've been two strikes. There's still a SAG-AFTRA strike going on. You know, the industry's changing. It's becoming more the Wild West than it's ever been before. The pay to play sites are in decline. Things are moving more amorphously in different directions than they ever have. You know, and it's just, it's a, I think we're in a moment of

change. I think the I saw your one of your recent I don't remember if it was a podcast or one of your recent videos but where you were talking about how people don't realize the economy's not as good as numbers might look and I think corporations are preparing for a recession. I think they're pulling back on spending on certain things not necessarily advertising. I'm not seeing it.

I'm not saying it on commercial as much as I am, maybe a little slower in some narration areas and obviously trailer's dead right now. You know, and promo seems a little slower than normal. Part of that's probably due to the strike. You know, so it's, yeah, it's not, I don't think anybody's having a banner year this year, but there are a lot of factors involved with that.

Paul (02:37.268)

And I think one of the things that we, A, are not taking into account and B, can't really know yet, are the, like, how is the pandemic really playing out? Right? I think we're going to be going through some of these ripple effects for maybe another five to who knows, maybe even 10 years.

JMC (02:54.422)

You can't shut down the global economy and then expect to flick it back on like it's a light switch and everything goes back to normal. And I agree with you. I think the knock-on effects of that are a decade. Look, I mean, I'm complaining about three to 5% growth. In 2020, I doubled, okay?

Paul (03:14.189)

Right.

JMC (03:14.774)

The best year I ever had, 2021 was up on 2020. So it's, you know, it's a matter of perspective. It doesn't suck. But at the same time, yeah, there's something in the water this year where it's just, it's not the best year overall, but I think a lot of that is macro economic, more than it is voiceover industry specific. And I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see, you know, I think it's going to be a strong close to the year. At the same time, if we hit a recession,

Paul (03:22.028)

Right, sure.

JMC (03:44.902)

uh... you know in the next year and i still think people are underplaying the possibility of that because i think growth figures you see in the economy are in many ways very artificial at the moment uh... that i wouldn't be surprised if it lingers for another six or nine months uh... you know at some point the worm will turn and i don't think we're going to go into a hardly deep recession unless what's happening down the middle east gets really bad and start spreading beyond

where it is at the moment, which is a possibility. But yeah, again, I agree with you. It's more macro stuff than VO stuff. Although again, strikes and everything else play a big part in this too.

Paul (04:18.136)

Sure, there's the strike. There's still, I think, a lot of chicken little reaction to what we've seen in the last maybe seven or eight months out of AI, right? There's a lot of fear mongering. Recently, Izabela Russell said that she expects a voiceover revolution, a mass exodus of up to 80% of talent. Do you agree?

JMC (04:28.162)

Yeah.

JMC (04:40.37)

No. But I do expect at some point, and I've been saying this since the start with AI, that AI will cannibalize a large part of the very low end of the industry. I'm surprised, I will say, I think an optimistic look is to say that I'm surprised it's taken this long, and it hasn't really happened all that much yet.

to the extent that one of the things I do is I try and maintain a 360 degree perspective on everything that's going on in the industry. I don't play in the Fiverr and freelance site world, but I'm in some of those groups. I watch the Facebook groups. I watch the conversations. I want to know what's going on. One of the interesting phenomenons I've seen over time has been how apparently Fiverr clients are rejecting actual VO work because they think it's AI. Okay? So if you're five, $10, $50 clients...

are reflexively going, we don't want AI on our projects. I'm still, I think the jury is still out here. And I think the jury is out for one big reason, which is that the existence of a product does not predetermine demand for that product. They've created this thing, but there's a supposition of demand that I don't think the market has borne out yet, reminds me a lot of cryptocurrency 10 years ago, okay? And I do think, I think AI is much more likely to change.

non-creative industries to create, to change industries where there's a lot of busy work, where there's a lot of paperwork, where there's a lot of, you know, process work coding, things like that, that can be very easily automated. Generative AI with regard to actual creative output, I think there's just still for a long time going to be a reflexive human revulsion to the concept.

And yes, people will use it to save money. And yes, corporations are going to corporation because they're evil. But at the end of the day, I still think there's this reflexive pushback from creatives. And I do think SAG-AFTRA is very soon going to get a very good deal from the streamers and from the from the producers simply because of the fact AMT, the writers did, the WGA did. They can't hold out for that much longer. They're going through a little pause right now, but the negotiations are starting again.

JMC (06:51.64)

good deal. And when they do those protections will start to come into place. Legislation is going to start to come into place. People need to stop running around like the sky is falling.

Paul (06:59.904)

I agree. I think the thing that is going to push a lot of that legislation forward is the fact that, you know, Joe, John Q. Public doesn't care about the plight of the lowly voice actor. John Q. Public cares about having his bank account broken into with a synthetic voice, right? So I think the vulnerability of John Q. Public and Jane Q. Public and Dwayne

JMC (07:17.822)

Yeah.

Paul (07:27.672)

That's what's going to drive this legislation forward to protect all of us. And then from that...

JMC (07:32.262)

I think so too. I think there's also a movement going on right now among workers in general saying, you know, we don't you know, there's a rising up of it's not just the voiceover industry or actors who've been on strike. It's, you know, hotel workers, it's the auto workers, it's people in numerous industries who are going, we're not going to let corporations define our existence down to sheer commoditization. And there's a pushback that's beginning and you know, the cool thing about it is, it's one of the few things in America.

that is seemingly somewhat nonpartisan. It's not, it's a pushback from all walks of life. People going, you're not giving us enough for the work that we do. We're not going to take this kind of abuse. And AI is a part of that. I went into a McDonald's the other day, okay? And you know, they have these stupid touchscreens now, you know, where you've got to go through 18, it takes.

longer than talking to a human being. You know, it spits out a ticket, maybe they come bring it to your table, which they didn't do before, fine, that's nice. But at the same time, that whole process of getting my food, Tom once wanted to go into McDonald's, it wasn't my choice. But every now and then he gets indulged. The boy, the nugget gets his nuggets. But nevertheless, that whole process of ordering and getting that food served to me took easily five minutes longer.

Paul (08:34.48)

Sure, sure, totally get that.

JMC (08:46.23)

than it would have if I had just been able to order with a human being and not have to go through this ridiculous six foot tall interface that they have there. I think there are people who are just going, no, we don't want that. I think there's been way too much of an assumption of demand on AI.

Paul (09:02.02)

This is perception and I haven't been keeping track, but I could probably count on one hand, the times that I've been through this self checkout in my Kroger and not had to call over the Kroger employee because, right? Yeah.

JMC (09:13.926)

I won't do it. I refuse. If there's a self-checkout and there's no other option and nobody will help me, they will put that basket back by themselves and I will even go shop somewhere else. And more of us need to do that. And I'll tell you what, it's funny, I had this conversation with a checkout lady at Hudson News at an airport in Boston about three or four months ago, okay, on a flight I was coming back over to Luxembourg on.

Paul (09:23.693)

Wow.

JMC (09:38.938)

over to London and she was getting fussy because I wanted somebody to help me and I didn't want to use her little self-checkout thing and I told her I said look I'm trying to save your job. I said I want you to help and her manager was behind her and her manager said help him you know and she understood I'm trying to we need to do this for each other it's not about voiceover it's about society in general we need to help save our jobs everybody's job from this stuff because this stuff is.

It's what the corporations want. They want to spend less. They want to reduce human expenditure, participation as much as they can, right? You will own nothing and you'll love it.

Paul (10:12.217)

Participation.

Paul (10:17.848)

Let's talk about some other corporations for a minute. David Ciccarelli, out at voices.com. Your opinion, resigned or asked to step down?

JMC (10:21.122)

Hehehe

JMC (10:29.406)

I have to be careful what I say because I still actually have a non-disparagement after the settlement I had in the lawsuit that I filed against them a few years ago. That being said, I would be willing to bet that when a corporation, you know, loudly announces a separation like that, that I'd be surprised if it was voluntary. You can just look at performance of all of these sites over time and realize that what has been invested by...

companies like Morgan Stanley and some of the other buyers out there, they haven't gotten their money back, you know, and it hasn't turned out the way that they expected it to. I think they expected Voices to have probably a nine-figure valuation by now and I don't think it's really close to that. So, you know, I would be willing to bet that it's not necessarily voluntary, but of course I don't know that for a fact.

Paul (11:17.796)

Sure. What do you think this means then for Voices and maybe other, you know, these larger platforms are all private equity owned, right? What does this mean going forward for the pay to play sites as we know it?

JMC (11:25.695)

Right.

JMC (11:30.986)

Well, I don't think they're going to disappear, but I think they're changing. And I think that they're also like, you know, I've written a blog on this. I use the term in decline for the first time. These sites are in decline in the case of some sites. That means actual negative growth in the case of other sites. That means lower aggregate growth compared to what they've had in the past. That means that there are fewer.

new jobs coming in compared to what they're used to and there are also fewer new jobs coming in compared to the number of talent who continue to sign up for these sites. So what they have done over the past couple of years, and we'll use Voices and Voice123 because they're really the big two as examples, is they've essentially taken different paths towards trying to address this decline in overall aggregate growth. And they're not addressing it by creating more jobs. So what they're doing is they're addressing it by limiting access. And so what Voices has done is...

basically started to turn into a Fiverr clone where you're going to have to engage with the site on a constant basis over time and be physically present and be booking regularly and be available all the time if you want to appear in any kind of search or be visible to the buyers and get access to as many auditions as you used to. I think over time they're also going to move to a less audition based platform where it's more like Fiverr and you're being booked off of your demos or your samples more often. What Voice123 has done is essentially put up

paywalls and then made their algorithm more aggressive to the point where now you have to be on one of the top two tiers if you want to have any kind of access to regular work on that site. Now I am still a platinum talent on Voice123 and if I want to go on Voice123 as a platinum talent, I will still book easily 10% of my auditions and it's still like shooting fish in a barrel for the platinums on that site. A lot of people I know who are on the $2,200 tier who manage their account well and who understand how to do it the right way still book frequently, regularly and...

make, you know, what might be considered a living just off of that platform alone. So it's still possible for very good talent who are paying a fair amount of money on those, on that platform. But across the board, I think over time, pay to play sites have to be looked at as a less and less viable as a means of anybody sustaining a business simply through those sites. I just don't think that's realistic for newer talent who are coming up anymore. And I think on top of that longterm.

JMC (13:45.186)

They even talent who are still booking six figures off of these sites and there are some of us who do still do that Long-term it has to be looked at as diminishing returns because I think it's just going to continue to spread out in more and more directions Over time, they're not going to go away Um, there's still good work on there that people should pay attention to if they want to use I'm not you know, i'm pay to play agnostic. I'm not anti pay to play. I'm anti jobs that don't pay what they should pay

Okay. And so, you know, you go on pay to play sites, there's a lot of e-learning, explainer, corporate narration, medical narration, telephony that pays market rates. There's a fair amount of local commercial, some regional from time to time that pays market rates. National TV spots on pay to play are garbage. I was advising a talent today on a major brand coffee ad that was supposed to do a pay to play at $7,000, but they wanted to buy out in perpetuity for multiple 15s and 30s forever and ever and ever. Amen. And this was a talent who had major LA.

And I said, yeah, you can't do that because you're taking yourself out of the, you know, the caffeinated beverage market until the end of time. And you could get a 10X job on $7,000 from your agent. So, you know, that's what people need to understand is if they're going to use these sites, how to do it ethically and effectively.

Paul (14:40.779)

and

Paul (14:54.24)

And so in this time where we're seeing the pay to plays in decline, at least for now, in a time where we've got so much transition going on, what are the maybe top two or three things that talent, maybe more established talent and talent coming into the business now can do to sort of better their voyage through voiceover?

JMC (15:17.854)

I think number one is just diversify, diversify. It's like investing. So I always talk about the six ways to book work. You have agents and managers being one of them. Accumulate agents and managers at whatever level you're capable of accumulating them at, okay? And that's from local to regional rep to major national union representation. Get what you can get, get that rep. Because you can, if you have five, six, seven, eight agents, well, you're getting more auditions now from your agents on a daily basis than you're gonna get from a pay to play site.

And on average, the agency auditions start at $1,000 and they go up from there, right? They're quality work. So get repped, okay? B, if you wanna use the sites, use them smart. Don't, you know, don't.

buy a $2,000 membership if you're not somebody who's already booking consistently, okay? Use, understand how to use the platforms before you get on them. Get your marketing game in order. If you're doing especially non-broadcast narration, you should be outreaching to clients every single day. You know, I think everybody always talks about 20 a day. The people who are crushing it, they're talking to 50 a day, 60 a day, 70 a day, right? You know, there are people out there who are marketing machines. And also, if you're talking about broadcast work, particularly commercial, production companies and ad agencies, people think they're oversaturated,

still taking people and those relationships are the next best thing to talent agency rep because you're getting jobs from production companies and ad agencies in many cases number one they keep smaller rosters so your chances of booking are higher number two you're getting stuff that is typically unique to them that you're not gonna see from any other sources you know and then I'll tell you the biggest one I've been talking about lately is search engine optimization is just getting yourself visible in search and I know I've been pounding this drum for a while but I pound it because you know what I'm

JMC (16:53.406)

On Thursday in mid-afternoon, Anna and I are driving to Amsterdam and we're gonna have a lovely weekend in Amsterdam next week We're going to Copenhagen. Okay, I get to do this stuff not because I've already made my money I get to do this stuff because of the fact that I've got a website that is got an over 40 domain authority All right, and is averaging on a daily basis 20 unique visitors

typically from LA and New York IP addresses, a lot of production companies and ad agencies, and I'm booking just under two jobs a day walking through my website. And I'm working again like it is 1998 or 2005, where I'm working from storefront studios more than I have in 20 years, because I have walk-in work and I have got a spider web that's catching flies, and I can just go into the studios and have fun. It's really like going back to the old days and it's cool. And so you don't have to be a 40 domain authority. You can be, I just did a webinar with Joe Davis on this.

digits. You can be low teens, okay? If you have, if you're in a specific genre, you've got a specific sound, you've targeted yourself really well, right? You'll pop up page one on Google if you're, if you have those kind of numbers and you have backlinks and you have traffic being driven to your site. You don't have to get 20 visitors a day. You can get four who are looking for a specific thing and you're probably gonna book a job, okay? So at the end of the day you're SEO because young buyers today, people under 35, they hate paying rent, they hate the middleman, they don't want to go...

to the old guy and God bless our agents and managers and casting directors, I love them and I want to work with them for as long as I possibly can, you know, but these 25 year olds don't want to pay 20% or 10% to anybody and they don't want to go to the pay to plays for the same reason. So they're coming to us, have your website ready. And the number six that I always talk about where I have to put the last risk of self-interest now is yes, come out play and come to events. And that doesn't just mean the conferences we run, you know, all of them, every conference out there offers something of value. Go and.

and make friends in the business. There's this school of thought. A lot of people say don't market to your fellow talent. Well, I agree with that. You shouldn't be sending marketing emails to your fellow talent, but what you should be doing is building relationships with your fellow talent because we hire each other all the time. But you know who I don't hire? I don't hire people I meet on Zoom. I hire people I've had a beer with. I hire people I've had a meal with or cracked a joke with, right? Make friends and more work will come to you.

Paul (19:00.676)

Yeah. Yep. And make friends in real life, right? That's why getting out of the booth, getting out of your house is so important, even if that's people that are outside of voiceover, right? Be a member of your community, right? Help people, be a good citizen, and that stuff really does come back. So thank you for that. Your first point was about agents.

JMC (19:06.527)

In real life, in real life.

JMC (19:13.855)

Yeah.

Paul (19:26.756)

Good idea, bad idea to reach out to agents right now during the SAG Afterstream.

JMC (19:31.502)

I'm, you know, something I'm about two years overdue to kind of mess around with my representation a little bit, and I'm holding off until probably solidly a month beyond the strike. Now, what I will tell you is having talked to a number of big agents and also a number of regional agents over the past six months or so, I'm getting different things from different people fed back to me. And I don't want to go into

to specific agencies on a podcast, but they're of some of the biggies, okay? There are three in particular. One has said our books are closed. One has said we're being very judicious about who we take right now. One's still signing people, okay? Of the regionals, most of the regionals are still pretty open because they're mostly non-union, but definitely not the time to be talking to the major union shops for the most part.

look, there are still people getting signed. I'm seeing it happen, but you have to have a really compelling case right now compared to usual. So my best advice is, and even with the regionals, I mean, I think they're a little more circumspect at the moment. My best advice is wait till about a month after the strike is over before you start messing with your app.

Paul (20:34.792)

Local agents, so okay to reach out to because they're typically not doing a lot of union work, right?

JMC (20:37.29)

I mean, again, in general, yes, but there's a, again, I, at the moment, I would be a little more cautious than usual in general with agency rep. But again, I'm still seeing people get signed in places, you know, on a fairly daily basis. So it's not a total no-go. It's just, if you are going for rep right now, make sure you're loaded for bear.

Okay, I mean, make sure you got a referral, make sure your demos are tight, make sure you've got a little bit of a body of work and you can go in and say, Hey, you know, this is what I'm doing. Um, just make sure you've got your A game, uh, if you're going right now, because they're less likely to sign people who are marginal.

Paul (21:15.352)

Fair enough. I realize we're six months out, but let's talk a little bit about VO Atlanta 2024. What's gonna be new and different this year if it's time yet to share that stuff?

JMC (21:27.697)

Hahaha!

JMC (21:31.57)

loud Skype ring that I can't turn off. Okay. VO Atlanta 2024, what's going to be new and different? Um, biggest thing that's going to be new and different is the content. And I think one of the things that we're committed to with VO Atlanta, and also when we partner with One Voice, uh, in that conference is just trying to make sure that it's fresh from, from year to year, that it's not all the same people. We're going to have some of the same people, because there are some people who just need to come and talk at

Paul (21:33.901)

No worries.

JMC (21:59.446)

just about every conference, because they're so flipping good, right? And some of those people are going to be there, but we're mixing it up. A lot of the casting people we have this year, the agents, the casting directors, the managers, are going to be somewhat different from the people you saw last year. Yeah, we're going to have the Mary Lynns and the Tina Morascos and people like that, of course. But some of the agents are completely different from some of the ones that you saw last year. All the big agencies are going to be represented. We just announced today, Tim Walsh from Atlas is going to be joining us. He's their executive vice president.

of commercial and David Salazar is just one of the DPN agents who's coming. But in any case, it's the lineup's going to look a little bit different than it did last year. Probably I'd say maybe 30% retention from the people that presented last year and the rest of it's different, which is similar to what One Voice did this year as well. In terms of what else is going to be different, I mean, at the moment we're happy with the way it went last year. Our sales are currently on track to sell out.

at some point in February because we learned last year that we're capacity limited to a thousand people We weren't aware of that before kids would be Atlanta had never had a thousand people before so We learned when we had standing room in a couple of sessions that that's about all we can take so we know we're gonna Have to turn it off at some point We liked what we liked the way it went last year, so I think if there are changes They're gonna be

Paul (23:08.089)

Gotcha.

JMC (23:17.61)

the small, there are going to be just more amenities for guests, more things we can do to make the experience seamless. I think we learned a few things from last year about how to allocate space in certain rooms, you know, who's better fit for some rooms than others, how to make sure that rooms that are bigger are assigned to presenters that are going to fill those rooms and that ones that are smaller aren't overflowing with people. You know, and there are always little lessons and takeaways that you learn the first year that you do something. But overall, we were pretty happy with it. So it's going to have

different content. One thing that we are changing at the moment is based on current ticket sales right now we're not going to offer single-day tickets we're just offering the full weekend at the moment. If for any reason if you see us offering single-day tickets at some point it's because sales are lagging but we're not having that problem right. I'm too damn transparent sometimes.

Paul (24:07.087)

No.

JMC (24:10.642)

If we're desperate, we're going to ask for the single day tickets. But at the moment, we actually feel like we're going to sell out, we're hoping, a month before the conference. So early bird will run until November, I'm sorry, December 15th, after which we'll go to full price. You're going to see different content in the Spanish program, different content with the audiobooks program, some new kids presenters.

Paul (24:10.668)

He's... That's right.

JMC (24:34.358)

come in this year, want to get the kids out there. We had a ton of fun with that last year and that's a separate program that doesn't, that's a lower ticket price for the kids to come in and they've got their own dedicated space downstairs.

But yeah, we're just excited about it. I'm looking at this lineup going, wow, this is just as much fun as we had last year. We're gonna have even more. Oh, ooh, and we have our, we can't say, there's an ooh, we can't say it yet, but stay tuned for a keynote announcement in the not too distant future. And I think people are gonna go, oh my goodness, because it's somebody who doesn't come out to play a lot. Mm-hmm.

Paul (24:55.456)

Oh, there's an O.

Paul (25:05.689)

Really?

Really? Very nice. Well now, see now I've got two reasons to stay tuned. One for the keynote and one just out of curiosity to see if the please Jesus save our asses passes ever go on sale. J. Michael Collins. It's always a pleasure. Thank you for your generosity. Thank you for your time and spending it with us today.

JMC (25:19.39)

HAHAHAHA

JMC (25:24.155)

Right?

JMC (25:29.535)

My pleasure. Thanks, Paul.