Voice123's Rolf REACTS: Voices.ai & the FUTURE of VO

PS: And joining us live this morning for us this afternoon for him, the CEO of Voice123 live from his home in the Netherlands. Please welcome Rolf Veldman. Rolf, it's great to see you. And, you know, we met this past spring at VO Atlanta and I have been wanting to talk to you for years. And as timing would have it, well, it's been an interesting couple of weeks. First of all, welcome to the program and thanks.

RV: Very happy to be here. Yeah.

PS: So, as you're I'm sure well aware and by this point, every voice actor in the world is well aware that your biggest competition, I think it's safe to say, Voices.com has launched in the last couple of weeks Voices.ai. Just from a 100,000 foot view. I just wanted to get your personal reaction. So is this something you were aware of because I feel like his voice actors, we've known this was coming all along, if for no other reason, their terms of use. Were you aware that Voices.ai was on the horizon? And if so, what was your reaction when it debuted?

RV: Yeah. So we know AI in general is on the horizon for the last couple of years. If you've been to any of the last conferences you've heard me talk about this topic. I think we have a pretty clear roadmap ahead of us in Voice123, what we want to do with AI, positioning it as a tool. David did not inform me that he's going to launch this, this website, I think, is what it is right now. I when I saw it, I thought he had maybe bought a company, but then I saw that he founded this company himself. So I think it's...I don't know quite what it is yet besides that he or they want to start selling voice overs on their platform.

I mean, it is we look forward to what it actually is right now. It's still a bit unclear.

PS: So assuming this thing will be some sort of iteration of of what we're being told it is, I assume they're starting with a pilot program with about a dozen voice actors, according to their site, let's say, a year down the road, two years down the road. And this thing is everything we either anticipated slash, feared, whatever it might be. How does the introduction of a of an AI platform into the voiceover space, specifically by one of the pay to plays, how does that affect the landscape? How does it affect Voice123?

RV: So I don't know if you know, but we've got AI audition flows in our platform for the last three years, so there was already the possibility to book an AI voice actor on Voice123 for the last two and a half years. And we did that in part to learn what will be the most common use cases.

Like we shared a report about that I think a year and a half ago where we asked every single client that wanted to buy that basic click that part of our platform to have show interest in AI. What were they interested in? What type of voice over where they're interested in and what what we learned from that is for people who love the craft and for people who want to have high quality, they will still not work with an AI over.

Now, having said that, technology keeps evolving, and I think in a year from now you don't need to buy a company to to work with AI. Like the technology is so commonplace in the same way that so many people use a phone will have access to the ability to voice client with any type of AI. It's what goes in comes out.

So good voice actors will still be able to to use it to their advantage anyhow. What I think will happen in a way that AI will shape voiceover is that a lot of, for lack of a better term, functional voiceover information, informative or such as news or informative, such as a quick explainer or informative of like a weather report that kind of functional voiceover might be replaced or taken over or creates a whole new type of video when for AI specifically, it will drive up the need for human voiceover as anything, any new technology.

Most people think, okay, crap, I don't want that. I want to work with people. In the end, that's what a creative process is, people working with people. So that stays at the center. But I think if you want to succeed either as a voice actor or as a director or producer in, in audio, you'll have to learn how to navigate AI as a tool, as one of the many tool tools in your toolbox.

So of course we should see how it goes in the next couple of years. And I think there's going to be some sort of Wild, Wild West moment where where we're where it is unclarity about the rules, which is why I am mostly pushing for if there's change of terms of services on sites like ours, it has to do with the fact that data sets of voice actors are protected because that's where that's basically the intellectual property property that is at stake.

Your voice suddenly becomes your data set. Always look for terms of service that have that included that they don't steer away from those. So I think there's a legal... legal gray area in the next couple of years that I hope we so far have been trying to work with, with the unions and with other institutions like out to get some sort of agreement that everybody everybody can get behind it.

We can force companies like myself, but also company like Voices to use that becomes a safe place for people to experiment, to learn to use AI as a tool that it could be. So it could shape in all different kinds of directions. But after the first goes away, similar to how we all talked about crypto for two years, now it's back in the edges again. I think I will be similar, will be a hype for a lot of content creators, but then you want to create new types of content for new types of content. You also will still want to keep... want to work with with voice actors in this case so it will steer away in this to the to the left and to the outskirts of audio again.

But again, like for example, Source Connect, it's going to be it's going to have to be a tool that you'll have to understand, use to succeed in view. I know I went all over the place. There's a lot to be said. I think I tried to steal it in like a minute or two now, but I've been very excited about this topic myself.

PS: I'm excited. And as you can imagine, like a lot of folks, there is some concern there, right? I don't think I'm afraid of it because I've always viewed it like this. Rolf, I think our best protection as voice actors is to be really great as voice actors. In other words, to be able to be human and messy and unpredictable, those things at which, it may happen one day, but it's going to be harder and harder for an AI voice to be able to attain those things, but simply because of the fact that they are unpredictable. Do you see the shift in AI and especially from your perspective as a CEO of one of the major casting sites, do you see this as a full on shift? And you may have tipped your hand with the the end of your last answer. My guess is based on that you're seeing voice actors ultimately working alongside AI and not being subjugated to it. Is that right?

RV: Yeah, that will be the ideal outcome. So that's the one I'm trying to shape with the efforts that we have, but we only have so much in, so much control about the outcome. Like if AI becomes really, really good, then it might change the industry forever. It's definitely a paradigm shift, so to speak. So for we had a period before the Internet where it was the artists like, you know, we're happy for few that we're able to be a voice actor.

And then the internet boom and happened and then the hardware revolution made it all very cheap or relatively cheap to become a voice actor. And that boomed to to to a lot of people working in audio. And now now there's more audio being created than ever right now. There are still a lot of space for a lot of actors, but let's say A.I. gets really, really good.

Then I think the lines between a voice actor and a director and a producer and an editor start to sort of blur and they become one or two people that that leverage tools like AI to to do creative work. What happens then is that potentially we go back to the early days where we have a happy few doing a lot of voice over because they're at the best of the best.

That is an alternative form to whether it's just a tool that you use. But definitely for the next, let's say 5 to 10 years, it's going to be a tool that everybody uses. I, I mean, I'm an historian, so I always think in these long trends. So you can see like a pendulum swing back and forward and might go back to the artist being more of an elite position. But I don't know.

Most of all, I want to make sure that's introduced in a way that is ethically sound and that it could like it's chaotic now, but there's always a bit of opportunity and chaos, right? So if you are a voice actor and you learn these things that are ahead of you, they're not that scary.

In the end, you can just try them out, see if they work, and then suddenly you're able to sell and not just your human voice, quote unquote, but also your AI voice to a client who needs to do a lot of pick ups or who has besides the big the big commercials or has a couple of local promos that they want to run, which only changes a couple of words.

And then suddenly you can sell a package of voice over not just the one performance. So there's a lot of ways that it can shape itself, but it starts with having access to these tools. That's what the goal that we have in Voice123. Like, it's no secret that we want to stay in view and our goal is if we can, we can create these, these tools and these functionalities for our voice actors and our clients to do audio and voiceover creation in a transparent network.

Then Voice123 keeps existing. If we don't, if we don't change or adapt very natural that we become less important. So yeah, it's on the front of my mind all the time.

PS: I agree with you. I think we're going to end up working alongside this thing as voice actors and it will definitely change the way in which we work and it will change the kinds of work that we will continue to have access to. But again, I fall back to if we get really, really good at performing and it being human and it being messy, then we will continue to work and I think work in just as much prosperity as as we are now.

RV: Yeah, and there's... if... I can... sorry, if I can add one more thing, because there's one more element that we maybe don't talk enough about this, and that's the audience, right? There's one thing, there's a client and there's a voice actor, but in the end, it's the audience that decides what happens if they want to listen to a voice over or not.

Right now, people don't want to be fooled, right? You can already see test where they don't know it's in their voice and they put it next to a human voice. Like in 90% of those cases, those people pick the human voice because there's something there that can make them connect more. But there's a generation growing now, growing up with, uh, with text to speech already. Siri, right? So they're used to having a robotic voice in their life, and their standard of quality is different than the standard of quality that we might have as people that are pre in the same way that people who wrote letters have different standards than people who write emails pre-Internet. So the audience factor is another one that we have to keep in mind.

Like what? What does what do people want to consume? What do people want to listen to? And what is their definition of quality, which unfortunately is not always the same as our definition of quality?

PS: You know, it's funny when you talk about as a historian, you see things as a timeline and as a pendulum swinging. You surely remember YouTube and the introduction of YouTube and what that did to influence video production and pop culture. It, initially, it dropped production values because everybody was recording on a flip phone. I can't even hold up my iPhone because that wasn't even around, right?

Everybody recording on a flip phone and the production value was really low and that began to influence pop culture. And there were, you know, commercials being done in the "style of YouTube." What we would we would put in air quotes today. And now we've come full circle where YouTube itself is producing some of the highest production value videos on the planet. And I wonder if you think that will be the case for for AI, for synthetic voices, where it will influence the pop culture and maybe will come full circle where where voice actors are re-empowered.

RV: I think that might be the outcome. I'd love to have that outcome and I think it's likely because in the end people are inspired and want to listen to creative people and the best in that part of the industry, whether it's voice, where it's acting, whether it's the saxophone, like those people will stand out, they find an audience, people who adapt to new tools that the best, like being a YouTuber is, is a good job right now.

So in the same way that maybe being a good AI voice over in the future might be a very good job because it's about the creative aspect. And yet that's what the whole business is about. Like, that's why it's always weird to work for the company. Like. Voice123, right where we're like to a certain extent, we're like the LinkedIn of this version, right?

We're not the inspirational place where it all happens, but where we draw inspiration from is that, okay, we've created this network where we've did it, we've done it through algorithms, but we created a network where at least we can make the people who are creative, we can help them connect. That makes us very happy. We're not the ones doing the voiceover, but we're making happy that we're we're enforcing and we're starting that relationship and they go out and create.

That's been the most exciting part for our tech team because essentially we're a tech company.

PS: And I think, you know, and I said this before off camera before we started the interview, I think a lot of times as voice actors, we want to rail against everything that's not ideal. And quite frankly, a lot of times the P2Ps, both you, Voices, sometimes Armin at Bodalgo, I think sometimes you guys become easy targets, sometimes not just not necessarily as a group, rightly so....

But I think you have an incredibly complex and difficult problem to solve, especially since the pandemic, right? There's been a shift for years where you know, first of all, we saw the rise of all this work moving to the pay to plays, and there were a happy few that figured out the pay to plays very early on, both Voices and Voice123, and then Bodalgo and they made a killing. And then, as you know, everybody else discovered the platforms, how to use them. Now we have pay to play platform coaches that will actually help you with that. And then the pandemic hit, and that was probably the biggest influx of voice talent into the business that we've seen maybe ever, which made your problem much, much more difficult. We had the same amount of work, but now we had so many more voice actors.

I've often said if we just had fewer voice actors, right, the pay to plays would run so much easier because your essential problem is, I've got, let's say, 100 auditions and I've got 5000 voice actors. How do I fairly accurately and ethically distribute those auditions in a way that is still merit based, is still based on the likes and tastes of the community to which I'm serving, meaning the buyers. It's an incredibly complex problem. Speak to that for a moment for me, if you would.

RV: Yes, this is what the first two years of my job it was on three was all about, because in a dark, distant past we had a thing called Smartcast, which was our previous algorithm of Voice123, that by the time I joined the company, and I asked our team, "Can you explain it?" And they no longer understood it. It was changed too often. There were too many ifs and buts that there was no real predictable outcome.

PS: Very much like the American tax code. Everybody... we have to follow it. But though nobody knows really what the rules are.

RV: Something goes in, something goes out, but that that space in the middle, nobody knows it. So we started from scratch. And then you it ended up to be quite a philosophical discussion because like you start out with the idea with the same problem that you just prescribed. Okay, We have let's say we have a 5000 people and we have only a hundred auditions.

How can we make sure that the right people get it? How can we make sure that on a yearly basis that evenly... that's evenly shared? And, well, if we want to do that, we have to then also guarantee success for the people that want those additions, right? So in the end, the only reason Voice123 exists is because as a client who looks for a voice actor, you get the voice actor you want to work with.

So most importantly, we need to make sure that the people we recommend are the right people for... that they need. That's the main requirement. And if it's completely fair but the client is not happy, then that's fair, but Voice123 doesn't exist. And I've actually seen a lot of voiceover pay to play sites come up with that model of of absolute fairness and then go down because the clients were not getting what they're wanting.

So 90% of my time is out to figure out what is easiest for the clients, for both the job and for them to then get connected. Now we have that conversation about how we're going to shape this algorithm and how are we going to make sure that we don't fall into the same problem that we had in last time.

So the first thing that we did is we're going to make it transparent. We're going to always share how it works. But there's also a lot of ifs and buts that's always going to be the case. I can, I can, I can.... can have a very, like, in detailed discussion about the algorithm that goes into on an engineering level, like this is how it works.

But what we what it essentially comes down to is we want to have two components. We want to make sure that we have paying members that are very active on the platform and we want to reward quality, and quality in the eyes of the client, not quality by us. Because the first problem to solve everything would be for us as Voice123 to curate every single talent on the platform. That would be in a whole different business model that is not Voice123. We're a team of 30 people that requires a lot of eyes and a lot of a whole different structure for us and a whole different business model.

So we know that we're not going to do that. So we have to find quality and the best way is to get the feedback from the client. Then the very best way to get that feedback is for the client to tell us they booked. This person - I like this person, I booked this person, to like this person.

But the way most clients use voiceover sites is in the same way that you and I use Google. You've never left a review for Google, right? You're using it and you're you're getting access to what you want. In this case, the thing that people want access to is other people to work with them is very hard to get that from clients unless we force them to give that feedback. And as soon as we tried it, they go to different places.

So we have to almost delicately get them through that whole process. Now, the best way for us to know it if whether they book you or not, but we don't want that to be forced because we know that one of the more popular way to get booked on Voice123 is a client looks for you on our platform, might even send an audition, might contact you via your own website or LinkedIn or your email. So we... for us to have that information, we would have to close off the platform to not allow that. That's more to Fiverr model. It's also not what we want.

Then we come with the next big thing, and that is the instant feedback that the client can give about maybe how relevant the audition was or the voice for the voice talent. And that's how we got to the what used to be the star system and is not a like system where clients can indicate, "I like this" or "I don't like this." The problem there is not everybody uses it. As soon as we force them to use it, they click everything as a like in the same way you like everything an Uber.

So you start off in this process thinking, "Very simple. We're going to just make sure that's evenly distributed." And on all these different kind of problems that you're trying to tackle one by one, and suddenly you have a platform that we know with every project that's going to get posted, there's going to be more losers than winners. It's very rough to say, but with so many people auditioning...

PS: This is the nature of the business, too.

RV: But then you have to create software around that. And so we're trying to at least build in systems to make sure, like we have for a while, a lot of people drop back to the bottom tier of Voice123, that's impossible to get out of that unless you wait a year. We're trying to build mechanisms to make sure that at least more of the work is distributed, which is going to always be a case where more people in every given job are not going to get the job than the one person who gets and we want to keep that open component.

So it ends up with us having this algorithm, those two algorithms. One is the audition flow and the other one is a search directory where they can type keywords and then find you and contact you directly. We want to make sure that there's distribution, but there's always quality in every single audition that the client gets.

Because at the core of our business, we want to make sure that our clients get access to the voice actor they need.

PS: One of the things that has always separated you from the competition, Voices.com specifically, and I can say this for both you and Armin at Bodalgo as well, is that you have always kept the platform and I'll put it in air quotes "open," right? In other words, clients... irst of all, as a voice actor, I have some transparency into whom I'm auditioning for which you don't necessarily get across the street. And I want you to talk a little bit about why you've made that decision to keep the platform open and not be the entire gateway between... yes, a connection, but not a gateway... not a not a gatekeeper between the client and the voice actor.

RV: So Voice123 had quite an activistic start. Like, it got founded by Alex and Tanya. And Tanya was a voice actor as Alex was an engineer and Tanya felt to succeed in voiceover, there's so many hands in the pot. "We need to create something where that's not the case.

And by by the sheer will of those founders, Voice123 was created and that always became part of the internal value system. Like the best version of Voice123 is that nobody knows what Voice123 is. We realized maybe 5 to 7 years ago, there's there's a business problem with that, that there's limited growth. That's always going to be the case.

And the other thing is that we're not doing justice to the different experiences... in voiceover. What we realized, which is very obvious that most people who start in voiceover, either from a client perspective or from a voice actor perspective, "I have no clue what voice over is" and they might need some help. So we wanted to already started to maybe add new services that we can guide people through that process.

And what we always we always had in the back of our head that the way that VO works is that it is a creative relationship and we should make that relationship number one. It's also the number one reason why voice actors like us. And voice actors like us because of that. They recommend clients to come to us and clients like that because they can take the platform out of sight, because that's how most of VO works.

And like in most cases, I imagine it might be the same for you. It's not Voice123 that is your main inbox, it is your Gmail that is your main inbox. Or if you work at an advertising agency, is that version of your Gmail that is the main inbox to then have to be forcefully on all these different kind of tools is annoying and we don't want to be too annoying. And so it's always been this part. Now I would love for everything in VO to happen on Voice123. So we are building these kind of functionalities like booking and like a messaging system, but we want to make them optional. We want to prove them to be worthy or valuable, and by the sheer value that they might bring, people might start to use them.

We will never make them like a forced closed business model because it's not how our team was founded, is not the internal values that that we stand for. Plus I don't believe that's how how you can control VO . But yeah it is a better way to make to make money. It's one of the reasons Voices did it in the past, right?

I remember Alex explaining a conversation he had with David, where David was... where they had a discussion about, okay, you have a membership model, but you can also charge them on every single transaction. That conversation, as it would in the industry, People talk to each other. Like I think we call it double dipping where you charge the membership and, and that part, because a lot of clients don't know, is very easily implemented.

I think if we do it, we might lose half the voice actors, might lose half the clients, but we doubled the revenue for one year, for one year, and then it stagnates again. So it's a one time increase. But our vision, our horizon, is 20, 50 years. So we don't want to break things for short term gains, which I think is that [Voices] model.

PS: How does that ethos, how has it changed? How do you expect it might change now that you were owned not only by Backstage, which now owns Voice123, but now Backstage is owned by a parent company. Talk about that relationship a little bit.

RV: Yeah. Suddenly there's money in the mix right before. So before we were an independent company owned by two founders who had a majority stake, and they could basically decide everything and there was one CEO. Suddenly there's all these... As soon as the word internal stakeholder comes into play, in any business, you sort of need to run.

But it's unfortunately now what happens when there's larger, larger teams at play, that a good thing is that we tactically like this acquisition partnership because it opened us up to a space of VO that we weren't in, which is related more to to movie and to... to... to Hollywood and to the New York side of you that we're not in.

So that's what we're we're seeing the potential Backstage has and Casting Crew have, these companies that are related to writing that are related to acting or related to to equipment. So there's a very interesting content-wide group of players that can suddenly start working together and can support clients and vice versa. So there's a lot of interesting opportunity. I'm dancing around, I guess, the question about ownership. The way that we're structured is still the same. I used to have a board meeting with Alex, now I basically have a board meeting with B ackstage. They acquired us with the idea that they believe in the philosophy and the and the strategy that we have. It's also how I'm connected to the company.

If we're going to fundamentally change that, then that's not also what me and my team are going to enjoy. So you never say nothing will change, but essentially the same dynamics happen.

PS: But overall you're being supported in that ethos.

RV: Yeah, yeah.

PS: By Backstage.

RV: Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

PS: Very good. Well Rolf, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to to join us this what is afternoon for you just just became afternoon for us as we sit here just a little after noon Eastern and I will say this, that you know when I saw you speak in VO Atlanta... and I did want to ask you about this one last thing you mentioned in your speech at VO Atlanta, in your presentation, that I believe it was fully one third of all the buyers that come to Voice123, do one job. Can you give us as voice actors a little more insight into who that voice buyer is? Not necessarily the person that comes and leaves, but who they are in general. A third, commonly of a third, become maybe customers for life. What does that look like? What is the buyer experience sort of look like?

RV: So... that particular buyer is a person who creates we call a creative asset. But basically, let's say they want to campaign and they reuse that campaign for the next three years or version of that campaign for the next three years. So they only need us once It's a mom and pop shop or it's a local, it's a local store.

It's it's it's that or it's a it's a it's an HR team that wants to try an explainer video for their internal team. And a lot of people use voiceover not for recurring businesses unless they are in the industry of content. And a lot of VO as people are working in this is VO that is not inside the creative industry.

It is the parts around that. So the majority of our clients never, never come back or come back every seven years. So we have to... that's one of the reasons we have this long term vision. So we want to make sure that they come back in seven years so we don't have to fundamentally change so much when they have that second experience.

PS: It seems like another challenge to me because, you know, seven years... if we could go and look what happened in the last seven years and our business is changing exponentially faster than it ever has. So it's very likely that when they come back to Voice123, it will be an entirely different not only platform but an entirely different industry.

RV: Yeah, but the dynamics are the same. It is working with people. Like whether we have a a blue front page or a yellow one or a green one essentially comes down to, I have this idea I need a person to work with. I want to have somebody I want to maybe receive an audition or want to hear a couple of people do that. And if we make it intuitively enough, they come back to us. That's the... that's the main thing. Like this problem of not of VO being a very seasonal nonrecurring thing is the main reason companies have been struggling for so long. They raise all this money and then the money's not coming back because it's so unpredictable. You know, as a voice actor yourself as well, it's that it's it's already difficult getting that first job or that first gig, but turning those couple of clients into returning work. That's where to... that's where your career is. The other things are just, it's a constant battle to get that one extra job. So it is for that reason that we think in broad strokes and in in long term place.

PS Very good. Rolf Veldman the CEO of Voice123. Rolf, I will say this. You have always, even when it is not been particularly pleasant, you have always made yourself available to the voice acting community. You show up at the conferences, you engage in dialog. I actually felt awful for you. I believe it was in 2018. I think we brought you to VO Atlanta...

But yeah, that was right after the algorithm change. And I think a combination of bad timing and some angst in the room, but you stood there and faced the music and I always respected you for that. And you've done it every year since you've been available to us. You've always been forthright and transparent about your your answers. And I have a lot of respect for you, and I'm really glad you took the time to join us today.

RV: Thank you for saying that means a lot. Thank you.

PS: Rolf Feldman, the CEO of Voice123. Thanks, Rolf.

RV: Thank you.

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