The Trend to Add Voices to Technology has Created a Huge Demand for Voice Actors

InteractiveVoices, an online marketplace founded in 2003, provides a unique service to match businesses with voice actors. The service works a lot like an online recruiting service. Companies who need a voice can post a job or search the database.

Some cars now have voices reminding passengers to fasten their seatbelts or close their doors. People are buying audio books rather than printed books. There are talking websites with narrated movies that market their products. Online courses, training videos, voicemail, voice on-hold, virtual house tours, and video games are all popular technologies that use a human voice.

The latest trend to add a voice to technology is podcasting. A podcast is similar to a radio show, only it is listened to using a portable listening device such as an MP3 player or an iPod. A new report by Forrester Research Inc. says that 12.3 million US households will use their MP3 players to listen to audio podcasts by the end of the decade. BBC News reports that 1 in 10 adult Americans - equivalent to 22 million people – currently owns an MP3 player.

What all of these new “talking” technologies have in common is that they need a voice-over professional to read the script.

The old method of finding a voice actor was hiring an advertising agency. The agency would then outsource the audio production to a recording studio. The studio, in turn, would then subcontract a professional voice actor, all in all, a cumbersome, time consuming and expensive endeavor. Company CEO David Ciccarelli says, "InteractiveVoices simplifies the entire process of hiring professional voice actors by helping companies to find the right voice for their projects – on time and within budget. Businesses save hundreds if not thousands of dollars by going directly to the source, eliminating costly markups and intermediaries. Business people can easily post a job, communicate one-on-one with the voice actor of their choice and move ahead quickly on their own terms."

InteractiveVoices now has over 4,000 professional voice actors and thousands more clients seeking voice-over services. In the average month, over 69,662 voice demos are listened to by 104,978 unique visitors, creating 6,911 job opportunities. InteractiveVoices is the leading online marketplace connecting buyers and sellers of voice-over services.