

VoiceBunny: Fast and professional voiceovers (with an API). - ph0rque
http://voicebunny.com/

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jaysonelliot
I've been using Voice123 for professional voiceovers for a few years now
(podcast intros, bumpers, IDs, etc). The talent on there is top-notch, and I
always get a large number of responses very quickly.

As much as I like the design of VoiceBunny, I feel compelled by a sense of
loyalty to the hard workers who created Voice123 to point out what an
outstanding company they've been for a very long time.

<http://voice123.com/>

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torrenegra
Thank you Jayson! You made my day (and the day of our team!) I'm one of the
co-founders of Voice123 (and now also co-founder of VoiceBunny). Some of the
great talent you can find in Voice123 is also available in VoiceBunny. While
Voice123 continues to focus on its online casting service (we're rewriting the
Voice123 codebase from scratch!), VoiceBunny is meant to allow you to automate
the process of getting voices via its API.

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patio11
I could see implementing this for Appointment Reminder just to avoid all the
overhead that goes into organizing some Fiverr voice actress (who, contrary to
what you would expect from the price, typically deliver work perfectly
adequate for a telephone call) and getting their .mp3s into the system for a
new client. Otherwise I was literally going to have to hire a VA just to push
buttons to make that happen.

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matdwyer
I use Fiverr for all of our phone message / voiceover work and it really did
impress - to think that these guys can make money doing 100 words for $4
(after fiverr's cut) is pretty crazy.

The only thing that could be more desired is a faster turn around time,
although I'm not willing to pay 10 times the amount that this is estimating.

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torrenegra
Hello Mat. VoiceBunny co-founder her. We tried to identify good talent at
Fiverr to invite them over to VoiceBunny, but we found only a handful of good
voices out of over 300 people that were offering their voiceover services
there. How did you find good voices there? We would like to invite them to
VoiceBunny so that you get the same low Fiverr prices with the added benefits
of the API and VoiceBunny's 100% money-back guarantee.

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mattmanser
Dude, not cool at all.

There's a massive difference between highlighting your USP and insulting your
competitors.

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abe_duarte
I don´t see how he insulted, he´s just pointing a fact. Voiceover quality is
not exceptional.

Fiverr is not a direct competitor either, you can get all sorts of things
there apart from voiceovers, for example you can get book covers, video
recordings of people writing whatever you want on their body, pictures of your
logo in front of the taj mahal... its quite cool.

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abe_duarte
For those of you interested this is an API that interacts with a VoiceOver
crowd. You send the text and, for a fee, it gets turned into a professional
voiceover in a matter of minutes.

What you can do with it is things like this --> <http://avc.fm> , turn Fred
Wilson´s blog into a podcast almost in real time.

~~~
6ren
Submitting that first post (The Engineer's Brain), the 459 words are quoted as
$61.2 (+20% service fee) = $73.44

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bambax
Talents need a Facebook account to identify on VoiceBunny -- and there are no
other options.

How many blog posts explaining why this is wrong do we need before this
crazyness stops?

~~~
Kiro
All those posts have been wrong though. Just because it rockets on HN doesn't
mean it's true.

~~~
loceng
Yeah. It seems if people are forced into doing something to be able to earn
money that's enough incentive. It's a little silly, but maybe it allows them
to better curate people / review applications?

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yarone
I wonder if an economically sound business could be made in taking top web
content and "converting" it into podcasts.

My thoughts on the subject (from March 2011):
[http://www.yarone.com/2011/03/recording-top-web-content-
plai...](http://www.yarone.com/2011/03/recording-top-web-content-plain-
text.html)

~~~
tst
There was a site called hearablog.com (<https://twitter.com/#!/hearablog>)
which narrated some of the more famous tech blogs. Jason discussed it on This
Week in Startups: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTn5qNeHny4>

I personally think that this is a neat idea but VoiceBunny isn't the ideal
tool. You pay about $70 for 400 words which is about the length of a short-mid
sized blog post. If you just cover 5 posts per day, you will need to invest
about $10k per month in VoiceBunny. At this point, looking for your own voice
actors is probably cheaper.

~~~
torrenegra
Hi! VoiceBunny co-founder here. Our marketplace is new and the median prices
are coming down on a weekly basis as more talents compete for work. Also, you
are free to set the prices you want to pay. For ideas like hearablog.com, we
are also implementing a royalty-based system, where talents get paid as the
recording makes money for our client.

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yogrish
On Fiverr you can find many gigs by people who can give Professional Voice
overs for just 5$

~~~
jaysonelliot
Professional voiceovers should cost more than five dollars.

I wouldn't expect quality from anyone that would do a $5 voiceover, and I'd be
insulting a professional to ask them to work for that price.

~~~
joshfraser
That's free market economics for you. You also get what you pay for.

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twelvedigits
At Typecaster, we're working on a similar service: providing blogs,
newspapers, and other websites with professional audio recordings of their
content.

If you're interested, visit <http://www.typecaster.net> or email
info@typecaster.net and we'll be in touch.

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Caligula
Wow this is expensive. Over a dollar a word. "what time is it" costs 6$.

I actually looked into their other company, voice123 to do some audio corpus
building for a speech recognition project but it was way cheaper(though
painful) to just use amazon turk.

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JeremyBanks
Smaller jobs imply larger overhead; you're testing an edge case.

Estimating "quick recordings" of some random strings in their calculator I see
roughly: 5 words for $8, 100 words for $35, 200 words for $45, 800 words for
$70, 3200 words for $160 (~$0.05/word).

~~~
loceng
Sexy. Thanks - I was wondering this. :)

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prawn
I like the competition idea. For those who can cover the price, being able to
choose from a few options presented to you might feel like a better option.
And, unlike 99designs it seems, the talent is rewarded whether they're
selected or not.

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sev
You can only register / "verify your identity" by logging on by Facebook from
what I can tell (for talents). A Facebook profile can easily be faked just
like any other.

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retrogradeorbit
Yeah. I run a home recording studio and everything, and I got to the facebook
login page and went... pffftttt. CLOSE. Why not just have user accounts?

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torrenegra
Hello! VoiceBunny co-founder here. We're trying to figure out a way to avoid
some talents from abusing the system by having multiple accounts. Forcing them
to login with Facebook helped us reduce the abuse. We'll remove the Facebook
requirement soon as we come up with new solutions.

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apinstein
Very interesting idea. We have a real estate photography platform and people
ask us about voice all the time. Interestingly, almost no one does it due to
the expense and the PITA factor.

The idea of an API to attempt to automate that is interesting. Will have to
check it out!

[Edit] Question: if I have a single "tour" but want it in 10-20 chunks by the
same talent is that possible? We would tie each chunk to a single picture.

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torrenegra
Hello! We would love to tweak our API for this kind of project. When you post
a project, we could allow you to submit an array of scripts, thus allowing you
to get an individual MP3 file for each entry. Email us at api@voicebunny.com
when you have a chance.

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andrewfelix
On the issue of 'contest' based content; It's am incredible waste of good
quality work. I hope everybody who submits good work is compensated in some
manner.

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melvinram
It looks like they do since the cost of the project goes up considerably when
it's a contest.*

* Source: <http://voicebunny.com/projects/pricing>

[edit: added source page]

~~~
rplnt
Actually, it's a bit more expensive than buying N single recordings of the
same text. Strange.

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yassim
Okay, I'm loving the idea. I can see this being great for indi stuff. Probably
less hassle than hiring VO talent and a studio.

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itmag
How do you pay the voiceover providers? I mean, how does it work legal-wise?
Are they considered sole proprietors? Employees? Something completely
different?

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abe_duarte
sole proprietors, they are a crowd of freelancers

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itmag
I don't know how that works in the US, but here in the Sweden becoming a sole
proprietor can be somewhat of a hassle. You have to sign forms, talk to the
"IRS", pay a certain amount of preliminary taxes each month, do book-keeping,
keep track of inbound/outbound VAT on invoices, etc. It doesn't deter someone
who really wants to be an entrepreneur, but it does stop people who would just
like to do some casual work on the side for a few bucks here and there.

I have quite a few business ideas involving paying the crowd to do stuff, but
the legal issue is a barrier.

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petervandijck
It's MUCH easier in the US.

~~~
itmag
What's a good solution for me then? Incorporate in the US?

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gonnakillme
Is anyone else reminded of The Diamond Age?

