How Voice Crafters Connects Voiceover Talent with Clients

In this interview, we speak with Mony Raanan, the founder and CEO of Voice Crafters, a leading voice-over agency and marketplace offering services in over 80 languages. With a rich background in music and post-production, Mony has leveraged his expertise to build a company that provides high-quality voice-overs for various applications, from commercials and e-learning to video games and corporate videos.

Join us as Mony shares his journey, the challenges he faced, and his insights into the evolving voice-over industry.

Inspiration Behind Voice Crafters

SBS – What inspired you to start Voice Crafters, and how has your background in music and post-production influenced your business model?

Mony – I lived in Los Angeles for 12 years and owned a studio with a former bandmate in Santa Monica. Our studio lived at a friend’s post-production house, where we used to work on some cool projects we received from MTV, VH-1, or individual producers who needed audio editing or engineering work. 

Fast forward to 2007, I moved to Tel Aviv and worked for an e-learning company. During this time, my team and I developed e-learning modules for a software company named NICE. I noticed that many of these modules contained voice-overs, so that got me interested in the field. I had zero knowledge of the industry, but my entrepreneurial instinct kicked in, and I went head-first into it. 

At first, together with a friend and partner, we recorded local voice actors in my tiny bedroom studio. Then, I reached out to voice actors internationally, and soon enough, the roster included about 300 voice actors.

Voice Crafters operated as an agency and audio production company for about a decade, at which time I decided to add a marketplace component, as the workload was getting too much for me.

Initial Challenges and Overcoming Them

SBS – Can you describe the initial challenges you faced when launching Voice Crafters and how you overcame them?

Mony – We struggled to get clients for the first year and a half. My very first (and only) client was a game developer. I spent my days recording music for games he developed, which was a lot of fun, but we needed more cash flow to get the business running. Eventually, my friend called it quits, and it was up to me to decide if I wanted to continue. There were days when I felt overwhelmed. I would stare at the TV and not know how to progress. 

Eventually, I decided to force myself to do at least one thing every day, big or small, to push the business forward.

Then, I finally got a break. A keyboard player I played with at the time introduced me to a co-worker who needed a voice-over recorded for their company. 

That co-worker eventually moved to another company that used my voice-over service regularly and helped me get off the ground.

Ensuring Quality and Consistency

SBS – Voice Crafters offers voice-over services in over 80 languages. How do you ensure the quality and consistency of voice-overs across such a diverse range of languages?

Mony – After more than 15 years in the industry, I can easily tell a professional voice from an amateur one by simply using my ears. 

I personally pre-screen every single voice talent that applies to Voice Crafters and ensure the audio quality and performance are up to our standards.

Voice Actor Selection Criteria

SBS – What criteria do you use to pre-screen and select the voice actors you work with?

Mony – We have three criteria:

• A minimum of five years of commercial experience as a full-time voice actor
• A home studio with the ability to produce broadcast-quality audio
• Cannot have an exclusive relationship with another agency

I’m usually a bit more lenient on the first criterion as long as what I hear is a real talent that our agency can use.

The two other criteria are a hard no if a talent doesn’t meet them.

Importance of Localization

SBS – Can you discuss the importance of localization and how Voice Crafters approaches video translation to ensure cultural relevance and accuracy?

Mony – Great question! Localization plays an important role in our space because many companies want to move their products and services to new markets. 

From a technical perspective, there are several moving parts. Translation is one. Besides using local translation professionals to account for the differences in semantics, we often have to ensure the language is adapted in terms of word count. This is because every language’s natural pace is different. 

For example, localizing from English to other languages poses a challenge because English is a relatively fast-paced language, at 150 words per minute on average. Therefore, for time-restricted content or where we need to sync the audio to the visuals, we have to consider this when translating, and our translators know how to do that.

We often get jobs that require us to localize videos from English into multiple languages. We will almost always ask our voice actors to record the scripts at a natural pace because we don’t want the voice recording to sound too fast or too slow. 

When there’s no constraint on the length of the video, we may extend it a few seconds to ensure the natural pace of the VO remains.

In commercials, however, it’s a different story because we’re usually limited to six, 15, 30, or 45 seconds, so we have to ensure the text is properly adapted to match that time frame.

Audio-wise, we’ll use similar processing for the localized content, as far as levels are concerned, to ensure the final product is consistent. The processing will differ for individual recordings when using corrective tools such as noise reduction, EQ, compression, de-ESSing, etc.

Adapting to Industry Changes

SBS – How has Voice Crafters adapted to changes in the industry, particularly with the rise of AI?

Mony – The industry is undoubtedly in a transition period. I think many low-tier buyers opt for AI voices because they are obviously cheaper and take less time to produce. A model where a professional voice actor clones their voice and grants rights to use it for anything is, in my opinion, a threat to the industry’s existence. 

Voice Crafters has always been on the side of the voice actors. 

We support fair pay for all our talent, so with that said, we are exploring a business model that will use AI voices ethically to that effect.

Future Trends in Voice Over Industry

SBS – What trends do you foresee in the voice-over industry, and how is Voice Crafters preparing to address them?

Mony – I think we’ll see AI/text-to-speech technology get exponentially better over the coming years. We have always embraced technology, and AI is no exception. We’re already using AI within our platform to detect spam and other non-wanted content and run internal tests. We also have our very own AI Transcription Tool. 

As far as AI voices are concerned, we’d like to adopt a model that pays talent fairly per usage. I imagine our clients will mostly be enterprise clients who want high-end voice-overs at a discounted price. It’s in the works, and we’ll announce the launch once we’re ready.

Effective Marketing Strategies

SBS – What strategies have you found most effective for marketing your services and attracting new clients?

Mony – Our clients mostly come from two channels: organic SEO and directly, or in other words, returning clients. These have also been our most effective marketing strategies.

Much of our blog content revolves around linguistics and marketing topics, so it comes as no surprise that many of our clients are ad agencies and translation companies. 

However, we also get referred to clients from other sectors like government agencies, e-learning companies, video game developers, and more!

Handling Complex Projects

SBS – How does Voice Crafters handle complex projects that require synchronization between audio and video elements?

Mony – My audio editors and I work on Pro Tools and Studio One (although most DAWs support video) to upload videos to our sessions. We can extract the audio from the original video (if applicable) to sync the newly recorded audio (such as dubbed content) with the original audio. Or, if the video has no audio, we simply use the visuals and or time code in the script to guide us with the synchronization.

We are often asked to find appropriate music tracks to mix with voice recordings. To that effect, we have our very own royalty-free music catalog — Audio Buzz. 

Audio Buzz was launched a year after our voice-over marketplace with the intent of providing a complementary product for our clients. We have amazing composers who contribute very high-quality music that is curated and hand-selected before being accepted to the catalog.

Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

SBS – What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to start their own service-based business?

Mony – The advice I would give to aspiring entrepreneurs is:

• Take the leap. Overplanning can lead to “analysis paralysis,” preventing you from taking action.
• We often become enamored with a business idea without considering if there’s a market for it or if our business model will attract buyers. This might sound contradictive to the first point, but I just mean you should test your idea before diving in. 
• Recognize that your final product may differ significantly from your original vision once you incorporate user feedback and adjustments. I like feedback from angry users because it’s often the most useful and can really help in making impactful decisions. It also means you must let go of your ego and accept other opinions.
• Be prepared to make mistakes and learn from them. Embrace the possibility of failure and starting over, as there is no shame in failing.
• Don’t fear competition. Discover a way to differentiate your offering and promote it vigorously!

Influence of Technology

SBS – How has technology influenced your business operations, and are there any specific tools or platforms you rely on?

Mony – Absolutely. Our website evolved a LOT over the years, from a simple HTML site to WordPress. Today, it’s an incredibly complex beast with a lot of conditional logic. We incorporate AI to detect spam, run tests, and generate transcripts. We plan to incorporate AI into more features we’ll add in the future.

We rely on online tools like Trello for project management, BitBucket for our code repository, Google Workspace, SendSpark for sending video messages to clients (great tool!), MissingLettr for Social Media blog posts, and of course — ChatGPT!

Common Misconceptions

SBS – What are some common misconceptions about the voice-over industry that you would like to clarify?

Mony – Many underestimate the amount of training and experience that goes into the craft of becoming and sustaining a professional voice acting career. 

It’s a lifelong journey, and quite a few professionals on our roster still attend seminars and workshops, even after decades of experience, to keep learning and improving. 

At the end of the day, it’s acting, and the nuances are many. 

Key Decisions for Growth and Success

SBS – Looking back, what are some key decisions you made that significantly contributed to the growth and success of Voice Crafters?

Mony – Launching the online marketplace was key to our growth because it helped our agency generate more revenue (albeit with lower margins) as it works 24/7. 

The agency is still keeping us busy with new and existing clients who want their projects managed with consistent results, and the marketplace is there for other clients who prefer a more cost-effective solution without compromising on the audio quality of the end product. 

The agency and the marketplace complement each other perfectly.