I'm surprised.

I'm not exactly shocked, but I'm genuinely surprised.

For years, the voice acting community has been begging Voices to take solid steps to protect us voice actors from unfair rates and unfair practices on their site. And I am happy to report they seem to be taking some steps to do that. First Voices has entirely revamped their rate guide for 2023.

And today we're going to go over Voices.com's new rate guide and compare it step by step to the GVAA so you'll know exactly where Voices' rates are substandard, and stick around because the surprise is there are some places where they're actually above standard.

So let's get into it. What exact changes are there and what do they mean for both us voice actors and for the clients?

Let's start with what Voices themselves have to say. Voices says that "the 2023 rate guide eliminates the discrepancy between suggested rates and the true cost of voiceover. The new rate guide shows the average cost of similar projects successfully completed on Voices instead of a range."

Now for comparison, the GVAA, which is the standard here in the States, really in North America, Canada too, almost always quotes a range, no matter what the genre may be.

Voices goes on to say, "The average cost takes the guesswork out of quoting and pricing to provide you [you meaning the voice actor] with a real, accurate number to work from. Clients seeking a more experienced voice actor or with a complex job will be encouraged to price higher versus clients with a similar job and a smaller budget who have the option to price lower."

So, there are no specifics on exactly how that encouragement will take place.

But the bottom line is that Voice clearly wants to leave the option of controlling the budget in the hands of the client, which I have zero problem with. Why? Because they're also leaving quoting discretion entirely up to the voice actor.

Translation: Just like in the real world, the client can ask for any budget they want, but we still have the power to quote our own rates independently.

Voices confirms this. "The purpose of this new guide is to provide you as the talent with the freedom to quote on jobs the way you want to, and to encourage client budgets to accurately reflect what the jobs are worth. This will help in your negotiations and empower you to quote accordingly."

So the bottom line is that Voices' new rate guide, the chief mechanism by which they educate clients on rates, is now more in line, for the most part, with the standard, which is the GVAA.

And that's a good thing. That's some progress.

Now, here's another and maybe more surprising move. Voices has removed in-perpetuity from the guide. "In the spirit of empowering the voice actors on our platform, we have also removed in-perpetuity from the guide.

“We heard from our community that in perpetuity is an ongoing concern... [Ya THINK?] ...and are hoping to discourage unfair licensing and pricing on these jobs. It will still be available on the job forum for those talent who are looking for in perpetuity jobs because in the auditioning process, the bidding and price is set by the talent."

So this is where you as a newer talent, need to be educated. Again, most non-broadcast work is okay to quote and license in-perpetuity. Any broadcast work... we're talking about paid ads here... including TV, including radio, including digital TV, things like Hulu and YouTube and CBS streaming service and Peacock and everything else, and Internet radio should never be quoted and licensed in perpetuity, period.

Non-Broadcast

So let's compare Voices.com's new rate guide versus the GVAA rate guide. And we'll start with non-broadcast. Now, Voices has done a good job of roughly following the GVAA finished minutes scale, so you can compare for the most part apples to apples. But here's where you need to be aware.

Voices' non-broadcast rates are roughly 75 to 80% of GVAA rates. But don't forget, you're only making 80% of what you quote on Voices because the platform gets 20%. What that means is if you're making 80% of 80%, you're really only making 64% of GVAA rates when you quote Voices' rates on Voices, which to me is unacceptable.

My recommendation is and always has been, for non-broadcast, quote at or above GVAA rates on Voices.com.

While the new Voices rate guide is more in line with GVAA, it is not in line with GVAA. But again, it's progress and you need to be aware and run your professional business accordingly.

Broadcast

Now let's go to the other side. Let's compare broadcast rates from the new Voices.com rate guide with the GVAA.

One-year rates for TV and radio are significantly lower on Voices.com's guide and 13 week rates for TV and radio on Voices.com are significantly higher.

Now remember, Voices says that their rate guide "shows the average cost of similar projects successfully completed on voices." So if you are on Voices.com, know that those projects are going for more than GVAA rates, so you'll have a business decision to make whether you want to quote GVAA or Voices.com’s rates.

And finally, Voices doesn't even break down local regional and national for online ads. They just have one rate for worldwide usage for online ads and that's a glaring error. That's how digital TV ads are bought and sold. Voices.com's digital rate, quite frankly, for "worldwide" usage is a fraction of the GVAA rates and, quite frankly, a joke.

They need to fix this.

Some progress? Yes.

Is Voices.com there yet? No.

But if we as voice actors understand the differences and the gaps between the two rate guides, then we're armed with better information to make better decisions for our own businesses. And to that end, Voices has taken a step in the right direction.

I've said it before: we get what we tolerate, and if we tolerate shitty rates, then that's exactly what we'll get.

I applaud Voices for taking a step in the right direction. More is needed, but they deserve some credit for this.

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