The quote of him in the article doesn’t sound like it’s a complaint. I think only the headline is pushing that angle. 200 pounds sounds pretty reasonable, given it has to be worth his time to get to the recording, listen to any feedback/change requests, etc.
I’d be interested what people think he should be paid. Based on the downvotes on your comment, people say 200€ is too low? It was in 2009, so inflation adjusted it’s 300€. And the article has the complete raw recording, it took him less than a minute.
I suppose some people expect you should get royalties every time your voice appears anywhere so in their eyes he should be a millionaire from this gig or something ridiculous like that.
Definitely not ridiculous to think so, considering how many people recognize his voice. Just like one great book will be bought by many people and make its author rich, a great line recognized by many people should be remunated as such.
It’s couple words that could have been said by anyone with nice voice and good diction. I’m probably not such person, but if you would pick 100 random people, you would get someone who could do a good job for this kind of quick announcement.
Most internal employees would even do this for free. One time payment of 200 eur seems fair.
Much more depending on the usage. The length of the audio counts in the rate but less than its use, how long and where it would be used.
For instance, a perpetuity buyout (one of the thing he should have negotiated), are very expensive. Audiobooks for instance are longer but cheaper. My rate is 350/per finished hour for audiobooks, which is pretty average in the field. While a 30 seconds national radio commercial for my country, I would ask between 350 and 500, and that’s with a limited time they would be allowed to use/broadcast it.
Seems fair both ways to me. That doesn’t seem an unreasonable amount of pay for a day’s work, as even if the ‘final product’ is only a minute, it will still have stopped him from doing much other work that day. Contrariwise, if he’d been asking for any more, the client would have been able to find someone else to do it just as well at the original price, since the requirement is basically ‘clearly spoken’. Wouldn’t make sense to get Ian McKellen in to interpret this bit of acting work.
The rights for usage should be much much higher. Just like recording Siri’s voice and an e-learning project might have taken the same time but the usage and how many people are going to hear the voice is widely different.
Furthermore, “it only took him a minute” is akin to say to a graphic designer why pay him so much for a website that took him less than a day to do: it takes years, practice, and skill to be able to do in only a minute.
If anything, considering that a lot of people seems to recognize his voice, he should have been able to retire on this simple few words.
Just like one good jingle or one hit wonder can make their author very rich.
Sorry but is he complaining? It’s two fucking words. It took more effort to type this comment than say the two words.
The quote of him in the article doesn’t sound like it’s a complaint. I think only the headline is pushing that angle. 200 pounds sounds pretty reasonable, given it has to be worth his time to get to the recording, listen to any feedback/change requests, etc.
I’d be interested what people think he should be paid. Based on the downvotes on your comment, people say 200€ is too low? It was in 2009, so inflation adjusted it’s 300€. And the article has the complete raw recording, it took him less than a minute.
I suppose some people expect you should get royalties every time your voice appears anywhere so in their eyes he should be a millionaire from this gig or something ridiculous like that.
Definitely not ridiculous to think so, considering how many people recognize his voice. Just like one great book will be bought by many people and make its author rich, a great line recognized by many people should be remunated as such.
It’s couple words that could have been said by anyone with nice voice and good diction. I’m probably not such person, but if you would pick 100 random people, you would get someone who could do a good job for this kind of quick announcement.
Most internal employees would even do this for free. One time payment of 200 eur seems fair.
It would be devaluating the value and the work of voice over artists.
I’m not even a well known voice over artist and I get paid way more for words that fewer people will hear. And I’m not even in an union.
He got shafted.
More than 300€ per minute?
Much more depending on the usage. The length of the audio counts in the rate but less than its use, how long and where it would be used.
For instance, a perpetuity buyout (one of the thing he should have negotiated), are very expensive. Audiobooks for instance are longer but cheaper. My rate is 350/per finished hour for audiobooks, which is pretty average in the field. While a 30 seconds national radio commercial for my country, I would ask between 350 and 500, and that’s with a limited time they would be allowed to use/broadcast it.
Here is a rate sheet for standard usage, if you are interested: https://globalvoiceacademy.com/gvaa-rate-guide-2/
I’m so excited, I don’t get to talk about this aspect of my job often :)) Thank you for your interest so far!
Seems fair both ways to me. That doesn’t seem an unreasonable amount of pay for a day’s work, as even if the ‘final product’ is only a minute, it will still have stopped him from doing much other work that day. Contrariwise, if he’d been asking for any more, the client would have been able to find someone else to do it just as well at the original price, since the requirement is basically ‘clearly spoken’. Wouldn’t make sense to get Ian McKellen in to interpret this bit of acting work.
It’s ok for the day’s work but the usage rights seem to go on forever and that should be compensated as well
The rights for usage should be much much higher. Just like recording Siri’s voice and an e-learning project might have taken the same time but the usage and how many people are going to hear the voice is widely different.
Furthermore, “it only took him a minute” is akin to say to a graphic designer why pay him so much for a website that took him less than a day to do: it takes years, practice, and skill to be able to do in only a minute.
If anything, considering that a lot of people seems to recognize his voice, he should have been able to retire on this simple few words.
Just like one good jingle or one hit wonder can make their author very rich.