My life is about to shift in a big way—I can feel it in my bones.
Right now, two obvious options are on the table:
A) Quit my careers in voiceover and music to focus on something else entirely for a while because AI has dramatically shifted the business landscape, or
B) Dig deep, even though I’m exhausted from the past two years of trying like hell to get my income back to what it was in 2022. And when I say exhausted, I mean at-the-end-of-my-rope exhausted.
Let me outline the shift that brought me to this point:
2022 (January 1 – October 12): 875 auditions, 99 gigs booked (11.3% booking rate)
2023 (January 1 – October 12): 1,092 auditions, 91 gigs booked (8% booking rate)
2024 (January 1 – October 12): 1,384 auditions, 58 gigs booked (4% booking rate)
(I obviously ran all the numbers and comparisons on October 12th of this year.)
In two years, I’ve nearly doubled my audition load while achieving only a third of the bookings. The result? A more than 75% loss of income since 2022.
What the hell happened?!
Well, let me tell you what I was doing wrong. First, I put all my eggs in one basket: Voice123.com. Only in January 2024 did I decide to branch out, adding Voices.com to my daily agenda. I didn’t see much improvement. Eventually, I added Voquent and Bodalgo, and I submitted to several non-union casting agencies, like VoicesNow and VoxTalent. Despite all this effort, I haven’t booked a new client in two months.
Am I bad at what I do? No.
Does my quality suck? I’ll let you be the judge of that.
Am I terrible at communication? Hardly—how else would I have earned the 5-star ratings I’ve worked so hard for?
Quick aside for the obvious question: Why didn’t I join the union? To be honest, I was making more money than any union voiceover artist I knew. As a single parent, I couldn't afford to lose any income, and there was plenty of work in eLearning and explainer videos—my bread and butter.
So why the slowdown? One of my theories is that many of those bread-and-butter gigs have shifted to AI voices. Many of my clients are small agencies that need to innovate to save money.
Curious, I reached out to a few. Yes, they admitted to using AI—but only as placeholder voices for their projects, they claimed. Sometimes, though, the client got used to the AI voice... You can see where I’m going with this.
I kept digging. I reached out to a few successful voiceover artists to get their take on why things might be slowing down this year. Their answers?
“It’s an election cycle—advertising is more expensive, so things slow down.”
“Your voice type probably just isn’t trending this year.”
“You’re not in a niche enough part of the industry.”
No one mentioned AI—at least, not until I brought it up. Even then, most seemed to think it wasn’t affecting their careers.
I wasn’t so sure, so I asked Voice123.com directly. I gave them my stats and asked if they’d onboarded thousands of new voiceover artists, changed their algorithm, or penalized me for taking payments off-platform when clients requested it. Their responses?
Email #1:“No, you are not penalized for completing a booking off-platform. The ranking score is only affected by likes and booked proposals, even if the booking is closed or canceled after creation.Unreviewed proposals won’t affect you, nor will proposals with no likes where no other auditions received likes.”
Email #2:“Your data shows you are receiving more auditions. This means Voice123 is meeting its goal of sending you leads to connect with clients. Ultimately, clients have the final say in who they choose to hire, so it’s difficult for us to provide a specific reason why you may not have been selected.”
So, I’m receiving more auditions than before...but booking fewer of them. I'm stumped.
Now, push comes to shove, and I have to make my move. It’s sh*t or get off the pot time.
After a month of what I can only describe as a poor person’s mid-life crisis (days of crying and pillow punching, wild business ideas so far out of left field even I am shocked to have come up with them, and countless meditation attempts abandoned 5 minutes in because my brain refuses to shut up for even a millisecond), I decided to buckle in and buckle down.
I booked a trip to the Society of Vocal Arts & Sciences’ That’s Voiceover 2024 in Los Angeles. I auditioned for every project associated with the event, and in the process of researching the hosts and attendees, I’ve actually gotten excited about some of the niches within the industry.
Sure, many will likely be taken over by AI in the not-too-distant future, but I think a few will remain untouched—for now. Or, at least long enough for me to figure out a backup plan, like creating an OnlyFans account to sell pictures of my kneecaps. (Yes, that one girl on TikTok did it as a joke and actually made money.)
sigh
Okay, Universe. Let’s do this.
I’m ready to WORK.