5 New Job Trends for the Voice-over Artist There is increasing demand for confident and rich voices in the entertainment, advertising, corporate, e-learning, animation, training, marketing, education, radio and other industry verticals

Whether it's the metro rail announcements, an ad campaign or listening to radio-we hear voices throughout the day. Barely have we known the voice by their name unless the voices are from personalities like Amitabh Bachchan, Piyush Pandey, Richa Nigam or Raghubir Yadav.

Voice acting is an offbeat career option certainly. When we prepare our child to be a doctor, engineer, teacher or something else, obviously we don't think of making him/her a voice-over artist. However, with the dominance of digital media and entertainment these days, voice over industry is looking at tremendous growth potential. According to the Indian Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), Indian media and entertainment (M&E) the industry grew at a CAGR of 10.90 per cent from FY17-18; estimated to grow at a CAGR of 13.10 Per cent to reach INR 2,660.20 billion (US$ 39.68 billion) by FY23 from INR 1,436.00 billion (US$ 22.28 billion) in FY18.

Looking at the growth potential and the different aspects where a voice-over artist can fit in, we see there is increasing demand for confident and rich voices in the entertainment, advertising, corporate, e-learning, animation, training, marketing, education, radio and other industry verticals. Moreover, technology advancement has been making the demand more profound in areas such as videogames, apps, GPS, text to speech, internet publishing besides the conventional streams.

Five most popular careers for a voice-over artist:

Lending Voice to GPS

This is an extremely new area for voice-over artists to explore. However, with our present Google Maps voice, we have Karen Jacobsen's voice guiding us with a new route and direction. She is popularly known as the GPS girl. From 2011 to 2014, she lent her voice as Australian tone of the Siri application on Apple iPhones, iPods and iPads. With new technologies like the text to speech, Alexa making their presence felt in our lives, there are tremendous opportunities to find a career on these platforms.

Animation Films

India has earned the name of a low-cost animation filmmaking country over the years and Mumbai is the centre of this industry. In Mumbai, there are a host of such animation companies where you will see voice over artists taking up voice-over as a part-time career and this has been taken across the length and breadth of the society. We can seebank managers, homemakers, child specialists and even journalistslending voice for different animated films. This gives them the flexibility of earning extra income at theirown pace and time. Given the vast scope of animation and voice-over, the trend is surely drifting from a part-time career option to a full-fledged professional career!

Voice for Videogames

Voicing for a video game is a very demanding type of voice acting. The video games have characters that are presented as real people and in addition, you may have to host voices for different characters. Also, the nature of the job for video games is nonlinear! i.e your script will have only your lines. Delivering line after line independently, rather than connecting with another actor and allowing a script's lines to become an organic conversation, requires an actor to think differently. The dialogue in video games is often short, punchy, and might be presented to players between long periods of active gameplay. Because of this, each piece of dialogue must be able to stand on its own. Further complexity is that depending on the game, you get to portray different aspects of a character based on player choices. When a player makes choices about a character, they need to feel that the voice still fits.

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Different ad campaigns achieve success for their authentic rich voice along with credible content. In this regard, every successful ad campaign boasts a voice that leaves an ever-lasting impression among the audience. A good voice-over artist with interest in advertisements should be able to find plenty of opportunities to make a fortune in this space.

Corporate Presentations

The business of every scale prepares an official corporate presentation with different elements of sales figures, client base, geography, target and many other such essentials to present before a client. Ever thought of who's the impressive voice behind those presentations? Companies, depending on their need look for a perfect voice match to suit their requirement. There is a greater need for voice actors for different types of corporate presentations ranging from those for a corporate's internal or external use, which may include a sales pitch, training presentations, safety guidelines & safety drills among others. The demand for such work is ever growing and hence the opportunity of you fitting in that role is getting bigger.

Radio Jockey

Even when we are not interested in the discussed career options above, think about the life of a Radio Jockey. Indian RJs including Naved, Malishka, Ginnie, etc are famous Indian RJs who inspire to take the career of a radio professional seriously. Unlike other voice-over artists, RJ's get the privilege to get connected with their audience where they can speak, laugh, debate and sometimes play a prank as well.