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2019 Trends Report: What’s Coming for Voice Actors and Creatives

Tanya Chopp | December 4, 2018

An illustrated graphic depicts a man looking out over the edge of a cliff through a telescope, as though gazing into the future

As a marketplace serving those who hire voice actors, and voice actors looking for work, Voices is in a unique position to track trends in media production, as well as trends in voice over hiring.

The opportunity to get a pulse on the lives of those who use our platform is one that we capitalize on: Each year, Voices gathers survey data and polls our database to assemble a report that’s rich with insightful trends that we share with our community.

In this article

  1. 1. Voice Acting and Creative Industry Trend: Freelance Economy Grows for Voice Actors and Creatives
  2. 2. Elearning Industry Booms
  3. About Elearning Voice Over Jobs
  4. How to get Elearning Voice Over Work
  5. 3. Female Voice Actor Earnings Balanced with Males & More Job Opportunities Coming
  6. Want More Voice Over Trends?

Here’s how this information benefits you:

  • If you work in advertising, media, marketing, or more – our research highlights trends in creative content production that are active and growing in your industry.
  • If you’re a voice actor, the Trends Report helps you understand the landscape of content production and the corresponding vocal qualities that creatives and producers are seeking out (e.g. the most sought-after vocal qualities).

You can read the full report online on the Voices Company Reports page, but in the meantime, here are three top Trends from the 2019 Trends Report:

1. Voice Acting and Creative Industry Trend: Freelance Economy Grows for Voice Actors and Creatives

It wasn’t so long ago that anyone working in the creative community felt pressure to be a ‘jack of all trades, but a master of none.’ For those working in advertising, marketing or beyond, the industry norm of having to produce a wide variety of content with very limited resources (e.g. money or human capital) made for an overwhelming workload.

Maybe that’s still you today, but it looks like throughout 2018 and 2019 the trend in the industry is for brands to move towards broadening their resource base in-house. Compared to 2017, 13% fewer survey respondents identified as belonging to an agency. Plus:

60 percent of survey respondents stated that they are using more freelancers (online, contract, etc.) than ever before.

This leap in freelance work adoption certainly fits within the economic climate in the United States, where the gig economy is thriving. According to a Gallup poll, approximately 36% of the U.S. economy (and growing) is employed by some form of freelance work.

This is good news for freelance voice actors. As comfort in hiring services online continues to grow, more and more work can be expected online. For many, voice acting as a sole profession may be more achievable.

It’s predicted that throughout 2019, online profile creation and registration with reputable voice acting platforms will increase in response to the growing opportunity online.

 Voices’s voice actor base, already significant in size (the largest, by far, in the world), grew by 24% in 2018.

Just getting started and want the 411 on what it takes to launch a voice acting career? We have your comprehensive guide on How to Become a Successful Voice Actor.

2. Elearning Industry Booms

For voice actors who will be looking to capitalize on voice over gigs online, it can be useful to note which industries are growing in opportunity. On Voices, voice over work is segmented into over a dozen classifications, from audiobooks to video games, and more. Interestingly, all voice over work categories experienced growth from 2017-2018, however, two segments stood out among the rest:

About Elearning Voice Over Jobs

Considering multiple reports of explosive growth in elearning, which is predicted to become a $200B industry by 2024, this growth in voice acting jobs appears to be rooted in a larger trend. Elearning voice over work can relate to projects for internal training, explainer videos, full or partial courses for education institutions, programs developed by private elearning companies and more.

How to get Elearning Voice Over Work

One of the most important assets you should have as a voice actor looking to break into elearning voice over is an elearning specific demo. If you don’t have one yet, good news – Voices has free elearning voice over scripts that are free to use for practice and for recording, too.

3. Female Voice Actor Earnings Balanced with Males & More Job Opportunities Coming

In 2017, we predicted that, based off of our data, the demand for female voices is actually set to outpace demand for males by 2025. However, this trend has actually moved faster than expected and we now predict that by 2020, demand for male and female voices will be equal.

What’s even better? It appears that right now, both men and women are earning equal pay for equal work. Currently, the number of opportunities women are winning (44% of voice over jobs) is balanced with the amount of money they are earning (44% of the voice over marketplace share).

This is exactly what one would expect when men and women are being paid equally (e.g. the % of work completed by women should match the % of voice actor earnings flowing through the marketplace to women, for it to be ‘balanced’ between the genders). However, there are still some areas of disparity, which are discussed in the full-report.

Dive into the full Voices 2019 Future Trends in Marketing, Advertising and Voice Over report to learn more about:

  • The most in-demand vocal characteristics that clients are looking for.
  • How clients feel about synthetic voices vs. the real thing.
  • What areas of voice over work are more popular for men vs. women.
  • And more!

Do you have any trends predictions for the coming year that you’d like to share? Maybe you’ve noticed an increase in a certain type of voice over opportunity, or trends for in-demand languages and accents.

Please share your insights with the community in the comments below!

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