The cost of professional voiceover might not be as expensive as you think – if you are making professional videos or animations the voice generally accounts for a relatively small portion of the overall project budget. This article on budget voiceover explains a bit more about what you are paying for.
Why can’t voiceover artists just charge a set fee per word or per minute?
It may surprise you to know that the length of the script is often not the main factor in determining the price. Many other factors are considered including the technicality of the script, how much editing and audio processing is required, where and how the material is recorded, as well as the purpose and intended usage of the script. All of these can affect the fee quite significantly, which is why it is important to give a voiceover artist as much information as possible to get an accurate quote.
To get an idea of average rates please check the GFTB rate guide here: https://rates.gravyforthebrain.com/
Bear in mind this is just a guide and Voice Artists set their own rates for different types of job. Since I have access to my own studio, I am able to offer competitive fees in relation to the industry averages – please let me know your budget when you contact me.
What is a usage fee?
A quote for voiceover work is almost always split into these parts:
Basic fee: Rates are usually calculated on a per hour basis (BSF or Basic Studio Fee) with a minimum fee of £250 per session. Sometimes longer projects (>2000 words) may be calculated on a per-word basis, usually between 0.15p to 0.35p per word. Very long projects might be able to negotiate a lower per-word rate.
Usage: If required, usage is added on top of the basic fee. This is most commonly a broadcast license which allows public broadcast of the material, and the cost is proportionate to the amount of exposure. The more people who are hearing the voice, the higher the fee. This could be based on the number of followers a company has on their socials, or the number of impressions they are paying for (i.e. the number of times the material is shown in promoted online space) in a set period of time.
“If you are using audio to deliver important information to 50 people inside your company you would rightly expect the usage fee to be significantly lower than if you were broadcasting it to 10 million potential customers”
Editing: Basic editing and vocal clean up is included in the price. If you require anything extra, like audio processing, file splitting or time-sync, these are charged as additional services
£250 an hour seems a lot! How can they charge so much?
The basic fee does not only cover the time the artist spends recording your script. Professional artists will have trained extensively, and invested significant time and money into their equipment and building a great recording environment to ensure your audio is up to broadcast standard. It costs a fair bit to maintain equipment, update software, run a website, deal with internet outages or tech breakdowns as well as pay for professional memberships, business listings and training on the latest software.
As well as all this, each job requires time for vocal warm ups, rehearsals, script mark ups, character analysis, liasing with a client to get the tone and style just right, practising difficult pronunciations…. as well as the necessary hours spent auditioning and marketing, doing general business admin, drawing up contracts and invoicing.
All of these unseen hours are worked without payment in order to provide you with a professional service, which you pay towards in the basic fee. Without this you would be receiving an amateur recording.
See my voiceover pricing blog for more detail.
Photo by Yassine Khalfalli on Unsplash
British Female Voiceover Artist 
