Renee Holliman recently emailed me this question –
“Thank you SO much for all your weekly newsletters. This one was so helpful to me as I am now being asked what my quote is to train the system TTS and have my voice used in the final product (I didn’t even know what that was until I clicked on your resources). NVAA even has a contract to send to the client – amazing.
Still confused about how to quote a price as GVAA’s guide is extremely broad and I know the client won’t go for the rate GVAA suggested.”
There are a lot of online casting sites with job opportunities for “training their system.” Some of these use a variety of voices to create one voice.
The “positive” about those is that it’s not distinctly your voice, so you shouldn’t have to worry about exclusivity. The “negative” is that it pays very little and you make no passive income after that.
With the project Renee is asking about (she sent a follow-up email), the client WOULD pay her a percentage when someone chooses her voice. This is passive income and, I think, great. However, the big drawback is that their contract said the company would own her voice. It’s okay if they own for specific purposes or if they clarify that it would divert back to Renee if their company was sold. That’s not what they said.
So, how do YOU navigate something like this?
RATES
Here are the industry standard rates for synthetic voice projects like this.
MULTIPLE VOICE TRAINING TTS
Meaning they use your voice, along with others, to create a whole new synthetic voice.
$250-$400 flat rate (no commission)
INDIVIDUAL VOICE TRAINING TTS
This is where you’ll be the single voice training the synthetic voice.
$2500-$100k
I know…this is a large gap. Read below for more questions to ask. Under this category, you can also get paid a far less amount. Companies I’ve spoken with pay $500-$1000 for you to record your voice but then you are offered a commission whenever someone uses your voice.
COMPANY SYNTHETIC VOICE TTS
This is when a company specifically hires you to be their synthetic voice. They typically own the rights to your voice and include an exclusivity but because of that, the rate for you is higher.
$10,000 – $100k+
Mike and I have both been in the final group for a company synthetic voice and they were paying about $600-$800/day for recording and $100k each year they would use our voice. We weren’t the final select, unfortunately.
Make sure if you are in the running for a company synthetic voice that you have an agent work with you on the contract.
QUESTIONS TO ASK TTS COMPANIES
1| What type of projects are your clients using voices for?
One TTS company I interviewed with said they had no guard rails in place to keep a client from using them for any type of project. In fact, the producer said one of their talent heard their synthetic voice on a car commercial! This can cause major issues with exclusivity if you’re a commercial voice over talent.
2| If they’re commission-based, ask them what the average pay is per month for other talent on their site.
The same TTS company I spoke with said it’s about $100/month. That just wasn’t worth it to me at the cost of losing higher paying commercial jobs that make up my income.
3| How many words are in the script?
You’ll be asked to record a certain number of words for the synthetic voice training. The numbers I’ve seen have a huge range. The reason you should know this is because it will give you an estimate of how long it will take you to record. For audiobooks, 9,300 words typically take 2 hours to record. Depending on how many words you’ll need to look up pronunciations to, it could take longer. You’ll want to take this into account when discussing a rate with your prospective client. If it’s going to end up taking you 20 hours and they want to pay you $150, that may not be worth it. This helps you determine if the rate for #2 is decent. If they want to pay you $2500 as a buyout and it’s going to take you 20 hours to record plus you run the risk of not being able to do other work due to exclusivity, it’s not worth it.
4| Are you able to create a synthetic voice with other companies?
Some companies want you to sign an exclusivity agreement.
It’s a lot to navigate, I know. We added all the AI/Text to Speech resources to our website HERE (even past email newsletters). The best weapon you have is to be educated.
Thanks so much Renee for letting me share this!