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Interview: Lauren Maree From The Voice Realm

The Voice Realm is one of many options available to voice talent looking for online casting sites. But what makes it different from the rest? What makes it a site you might want to consider becoming a member of?

I recently interviewed Lauren Maree from the Voice Realm to learn more about the site and how it continues to grow and improve.

Interview: Lauren Maree From The Voice Realm

thevoicerealm5starMarc: The Voice Realm has been around for over a year now. Have you learned anything in your “rookie season” that’s helped you make the site better?

Lauren: We learned that there are many professional voice talent out there that go above and beyond to make their clients happy. They want to provide exactly the same quality to a client that they would get by going to a major agency in a big city.

We also learned that there are many amateurs trying to pass themselves off as professionals. We sorted the good from the bad to create a site that only presented clients with the cream of the crop.

Marc: A common thing I read is that your site is unlike any other casting site. In what way(s)?

Lauren: We don’t allow anyone with a microphone to pull out their credit card and call themselves a professional voice actor. We pre-screen every single voice on the site to ensure their industry experience and sound quality from their studio is 5 star.

We also have no hesitation in removing voice talent that do not provide the quality of service that esteemed clients come to expect from our site. We release payment to voice talent within 72 hours of the job being completed and we also handle all invoicing and receipts.

Another thing that we do differently is not allowing clients to leave feedback and ratings – that just screams ‘tacky’.

Marc: You talk a lot about jobs being booked without auditions. Do you have stats on the percentage of jobs booked with no auditions versus ones booked via casting calls?

Lauren: 64% of our bookings come from ‘Private Auditions’ where the client auditions the voice prior to hiring them. 19% come from ‘Casting Notices’ where the client posts the script and talent audition. The final 17% of bookings come from a client hiring a voice over talent directly based on their demo. Something we pushed with the site right from our launch.

Marc: Tell us about the membership structure. What types of plans are there?

voicerealmLauren: There is only one. It is $99 for a 12 month listing. There is no way that any voice can appear higher in search results etc by paying extra. All voice talent are shown to clients randomly.

Even when voice talent submit to ‘Casting Notices’ the auditions are presented to the client in random order. So you can be the dead last to audition and possibly show up in front of them as the first result when they are listening to submitted auditions.

Marc: Can you give us an idea of the number of jobs posted each month and a percentage of male vs female?

Lauren: We recently cleared 100 bookings per week. Our clients come back over and over again. We have many voice actors that are booking 3-5 jobs per week from the same clients. Currently the break-down of male to female is 43% to 57% respectively.

Marc: What makes your casting system different from other voice over sites?

Lauren: As I mentioned we don’t show clients auditions in the order they are submitted. Also we have no amateurs on our site for clients to have to sort through. We also don’t filter out jobs for our voice talent to audition for. We have no computer algorithm that tries to connect clients with the best matched voices. That’s not possible. We stand by what many clients tell us; “I don’t know what I’m looking for until I hear it.”

Marc: Is there anything else you’d like to share?

Lauren: We are constantly listening to voice talent feedback. We have many changes to the site from this. There are however some things that we see differently than the voice talent because we see it from the client and voice side.

For example some voice talent were saying that they wanted more room to write in their bio on their profile, or more room to write notes to clients in ‘Casting Notices’. The fact was and still is (from our research) that clients do not read through bios and notes. They listen to the audio and make their decision if they like the voice within 5 seconds.

Lastly – do not bother slating! The client can see your name and does not care who your previous clients were or how many takes you are going to record for them. Just record the script!

QUESTION: Are you a member of The Voice Realm? Tell me about your experience.

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