Voiceover Licensing And Usage
Voiceover Licensing And Usage: A Simple Guide For UK & US Hirers
This is to help people who are just starting to work with voiceover artists.
If you want to skip straight to the excellent 4-minute video from Hugh Edwards, co-founder of leading voiceover community Gravy For The Brain, click here.
Like the Photography Industry
The voiceover industry works like the photography industry. When a photographer takes a photo, they own the copyright. It doesn’t matter that the photo might be of you - the copyright still rests with the photographer.
If you want to use that photograph to promote yourself online, in print, on a billboard etc, you pay the photographer the requisite amount to license the image for a certain amount of time. The rate for the license will vary depending on the extent of use of the photo.
If you’re using the photo in a regional magazine the license fee will be lower than if you’re using it for a national billboard campaign, and then more if you were to use that image in a social media campaign online.
Licensing a voice
We all own our voices. Would you like to find that someone had recorded you, remixed your voice and was making money from it without asking you?
When you use a voice artist to create audio for you, the voice artist owns the copyright of that audio. When the audio is being used commercially the voice artist licenses that audio for you to use. As with photography, if you wanted to use the voiceover for internal staff training, the license fee would be considerably lower than if you want to use if across your international company website and social media.
Exclusivity
A voice can be part of your brand identity. If your business wants to protect their brand identity voice with exclusivity, this comes at a price. i.e. Your pizza delivery company wants the voice artist to sign a clause that states that the voice artist may not voice anything for any other pizza delivery company for 12 months.
That’s significantly limiting the voice artist’s scope for earning, so it’s fair that the voiceover is paid relevant compensation.
It’s usually more cost effective for your business to license the audio.
Watch this short video
If you’re new to working with voiceovers, watch this excellent short video from Hugh Edwards, co-founder of the industry-leading voiceover community Gravy For The Brain.
Featured Image byPete LinforthfromPixabay