In my last video called I Offended Voices.com. and Here's How, the founder and CEO, David Ciccarelli asked me to lay out my points as to why I asserted that Voices puts profit before talent.

Now I laid out five facts that detailed their history of disregard for transparency when it comes to fees, taking egregious cuts of the budgets and a few others.

The reaction was just nuts, Unprecedented. Here's just some of what you had to say…

Karli Walker said, "So well said, Paul. Thank you for not only detailing the offenses, but offering actionable solutions."

I appreciate that, Karli. It's one thing to criticize. Anybody can do that. It's another thing to not only call someone or something out but to offer solutions, to offer a better way. I had a boss who used to tell me, "Don't come to me with a problem, come to me with a problem and a solution."

From Laya Hoffman: "Much respect, Paul. Your clear and concise commentary echoes my own frustration with this platform. Thank you for putting it out into the world."

Kay Bess says, "So good. Thank you."

And Michael Waite said, "I have one word to describe what I just viewed. Wow. I am beyond impressed and admire you for your willingness to take on Goliath."

Thanks to everybody who commented, everybody who watched. And to Michael's point, Michael, I'm not trying to take on anybody. I'm trying to further conversations around issues that affect the business of voice acting.

I believe that as individuals and as a group, we get what we tolerate.

And when we tolerate policies and behaviors that aren't in the best interests of us all thriving, then we need to create change.

Now, I also told David that if any of the assertions that I made, any of the facts that I detailed have changed since they first occurred, that you know, let me know. I'll make the corrections and I'll be happy to share that here.

Now, in fairness to David, I also said that I'm not interested in a verbal response and that I'm not much for words. I am much for actions. So probably as a result of that, as of the shooting of this video right now, I have received no response from David Cicarelli or his team at Voices.com, and I'm not surprised.

I did admittedly, now, sent them mixed messages. But to be fair to David and to Voices, a couple of other voice actors reached out to me and made updates or corrections to a couple of the points that I made.

First Carin Gilfry reached out on Facebook and had this to say:

"Paul, I think you're great, but some of your facts are inaccurate.

1. In 2019, Voices partnered with VocalID not to create synthetic voices, to work alongside human voice actors, but to help vocal ID cast their projects. Rupal Patel, the CEO of VocalID, spoke at Vocation NYC in 2019 and clarified this. They also pulled their partnership shortly after the conference.

2. Jamie Muffett and I posted a job as an experiment to eight different pay-to-play sites. To our surprise, Voices actually had the strictest and most industry-appropriate rates of all eight sites. They walked the client through every question. Medium, usage, time period, region, and educate the client as to why something costs more. All along the way. Then, based on the info the client inputs. They will not let the client quote a fee below a certain rate.

For example, an online ad to be used nationally for three months could not be posted for under $750. It was greyed out. The $5 jobs are only allowed for things like recording a personal voicemail, a school PowerPoint presentation, etc. It would not be allowed if a client said they are working on a commercial e-learning documentary, etc..

3. Voices does not have membership tiers. They still do have a Platinum level, but it only gives preferential search results. Everyone has the same access to auditions for $500 per year and the Platinum level is being phased out in 2023."

Now, to that point, Carla Emmons also reached out on the Pro Blog at PaulSchmidtPro.com and sent me a link to a blog post that David Ciccarelli posted in October of 2022.

It's called Platinum Sunset and the Future Vision for Talent.

In that post, David says, "Voices is moving away from a pay for access based service to a merit based system, discontinuing the platinum membership as a result. He also says When I reflected on our guiding philosophy, which is to build a business that's based on shared success, I realized that the more value we added to the platinum membership, the less time and attention we dedicated to innovating the Premium membership.

As a founder and CEO, I want to build an online platform that supports voice talent, who are engaged, recognizes them for their talent, and rewards them for their success. This means we will be focusing on one membership: the Premium membership.

Success on voices should be within reach of all talent and those who get to the top are there because they earned it."

Again, to be clear, these are not changes that David Ciccarelli and Voices.com made in response to my video last week. These were already in the works. I simply just wasn't aware of that. So thanks to Carin and thanks to Carla for making me aware so that we can update you here. So to be fair to David and Voices.com, I have an obligation to pass that information along.

In fact, I'll even put the link to David's blog post here.

Now, I applaud absolutely the end of the VocalID partnership and the end of the tiered membership system. I think both of those are huge. And I'm also very happy and encouraged to hear that Voices is now educating clients as to what proper and appropriate and professional rates are, and at least trying to put some structure around that when a client signs up for a job.

These are huge and real and significant steps forward. And as I said, I applaud Voices. Kudos to David and to Voices for making those changes.

But Voices still has a significant way to go to earn back the trust, I think, of the voice over community. A fair and reasonable terms of service agreement, ending this ridiculous affiliate program where they're asking us to turn all of our contacts over to Voices.com, and maybe most importantly, complete transparency to the client around the fees that they're paying. How much goes to the talent, how much goes to the platform, down to the penny.

All of these things are just the right thing to do.

But Voices has made a lot of unethical moves over the years. These are not just simple mistakes. These are moves that show a clear lack of ethics. And they've destroyed a lot of trust within the voice over community.

But it looks like maybe voices are starting to understand that that trust can be earned back. They may be taking some steps to do just that. We know they know better.

The question is, will they do better consistently and reliably over time to earn back the trust that they lost and to become stewards and caretakers and not the gold diggers of the voice over industry?

As I said before, when they do well know it because we'll see it.

For more information on the VO Freedom Master Plan, which is my signature program to take voice actors with no marketing plan, sales, or marketing experience, to having a proven process to grow relationships at scale over time that lead to consistent booking, business, revenue, and income, click on this link and to get my Move Touch Inspire Newsletter for voice actors, which comes out every Thursday, you can click this link as well.

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From the bottom of my heart, thanks so much for your support, for watching, for those of you that join the conversation in the comments, thank you so much. And we'll see you back here again soon.