It’s sometimes hard for me to comprehend just how much the voiceover industry has changed in the last fifteen or so years.

I remember the days when most of the major voiceover people were located in New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles. Thanks to the internet, today geography doesn’t play much of a factor. While the most prestigious advertising and talent agencies are still in the big cities, the talent can be just about anywhere in the world. This is convenient for those of us who like living in places like Sedona, Arizona. Others might argue that the competition has become greater because there are so many people now with their own studios and websites.

Recording and editing has become like word processing. Select, move, delete copy is simple, whether it’s Pro Tools or Garage Band. And finding clicks like mouth noises are easy to edit out. I remember watching engineers spend countless hours with a razor blade and tape, piles of cut analogue tape on the studio floor. It was an exercise in skill and patience. And time consuming.
Marketing? In the old days, I’d have to walk the streets of New York with a briefcase full of reel to reel demo tapes to deliver to studios, agencies, and production companies. Hours pounding the pavement. And to think that if I had any hope of someone actually listening, they’d have to find the time to open the box, thread the tape into a tape machine, and cue it up. In most cases, it was unlikely they would would do this. It was a matter of percentages.

Now, it’s just attach a link to your website in an email, or even attach the demo as an mp3. It couldn’t be simpler, and the potential agent or client is far more likely to take a quick listen.

Someday, today will be the good old days. Hard to imagine where we will go from here.