Al Black

Al Black (00:00):

Well, I think that's a great question that more companies should be asking themselves, because it's amazing how many big brands don't put enough focus on this.

Colton Holmes (00:10):

Without doing that, creators are missing out on massive amounts of audiences, right?

Al Black (00:15):

And I was like, "Wow, I've actually been experiencing this all my life and I had no idea that this was a thing." Obviously on the radio and TV.

Colton Holmes (00:21):

Not much.

Al Black (00:24):

Well, that's the scary thing though, isn't it?

Colton Holmes (00:26):

It may feel like a victimless crime, but in the end it's robbing someone of a lot of different things. I'm Colton Holmes, and today I'm your host on The Rough Draft. And this episode, I sit down with Al Black, co-founder and COO of Voquent. Al has 25 years of experience helping businesses expand their reach through voiceovers, video translations, and dubbing. And his company Voquent specializes in matching expert voice actors, translators, and engineers with clients. We spent some time discussing the importance and the value of accessibility, as well as the strategies and the advantages of localizing online content. We talk about AI's rapid advancement into the creative industries and the importance of protecting artists' rights. All right. Here's my conversation with Al Black.

(01:20):

All right. Online content is king nowadays, and there are some staggering statistics out there about how much content is consumed daily, how much content is created daily, but a lot of that content doesn't meet accessibility standards and is not localized for other languages. And I know that you have a lot of experience in both of those fields or areas. And so I'd love for you to just speak into why is accessibility important and why is localization important with online content?

Al Black (01:53):

Well, I think that's a great question that more companies should be asking themselves because it's amazing how many big brands don't put enough focus on this. We've actually been helping a lot of people over the last year or so with try to migrate their accessibility processes and try and treat it more seriously because it's a fact that a huge portion of the world have visual impairments. They're deaf or their hard of hearing. I've got some broad health organization statistics here. 5% of the world's population has hearing loss, about 28% of the world's population has some kind of visual impairment. And so if you're not making your content accessible to them, you're immediately saying that they're not important, they're not worth speaking to.

Colton Holmes (02:54):

Yeah.

Al Black (02:54):

And now the European Accessibility Act is coming into play. And so by June 2025, if you've got any kind of web presence, digital presence in Europe, you're talking to European customers, you're going to have to take it seriously because that act is going to make sure that any digital products and services are accessible to these audiences. And for that reason, we're seeing a big, big increase in things like audio description projects, captioning, that's just growing all the time. And of course for, I would say for the treble a accessibility, people are looking for sign language solutions as well.

Colton Holmes (03:37):

Mm-hmm.

Al Black (03:39):

And it's a really interesting time to be in the field and see how that's evolving and also how the video platforms are evolving to make accessibility easier for everybody.

Colton Holmes (03:52):

What are some ways that you've seen that evolution take place of platforms enabling accessibility options?

Al Black (04:00):

Well, some of the top video player apps, so there's hundreds of these in the corporate world, we kind of get visibility of them because we'll have to meet certain guidelines when we're delivering projects. And it's amazing how many have now got things like audio description built into them. You could have two different audio tracks put on there, one for the audio description, one for without. Somebody can literally just click AD and it'll have the audio described version read out to them. Another way that we are pushing hard is multi-language audio. On YouTube you can now choose audio tracks, you just go to settings and you can change your audio track to different languages if the channel supports that. And so we've been trying to make a lot of noise about that to push brands to take that seriously and start speaking to their global customer base, not just the customers in the US or in the UK. And I think we're still at the very start of that. YouTube's the first major social media platform to add that, but you're going to see Meta, Facebook and all the other platforms follow suit, I'm sure in the very near future that they'll be adding those features in themselves.

Colton Holmes (05:14):

Yeah.

Al Black (05:15):

At the end of the day, it's all going to come back down to money. And if you can localize your content and translate it to global audience, you're going to create more ad revenue.

Colton Holmes (05:24):

Yeah. I want to take a step into the localization part of this conversation, which is translating your content for other languages. And without doing that, creators are missing out on massive amounts of audiences, right? Talk to me a little bit about the importance of localizing your content.

Al Black (05:44):

Yeah. I mean, 1.5 billion people out of what, 8 billion people on earth speak English. It's a lot. And that's primary language speakers and second language speakers. And so if your content is not in English already, it probably should be.

Colton Holmes (06:03):

Yeah.

Al Black (06:04):

If you're a German company or a French company or Japanese company and you want to reach a global audience, it's an absolute no-brainer to put your content into English first, 'cause you're going to reach way more people than any other language. But if you're an English-speaking company, so if you're based in the US, UK, Australia, wherever, and you're not translating your content, you are basically ignoring that vast rest of the audience, which is what, six and a half billion people. And it's pretty interesting when you look at YouTube, for example, everybody sees YouTube and thinks it's a predominantly English platform, but actually there's more Hindi speakers on YouTube than there is English speakers for the most part.

Colton Holmes (06:52):

Really?

Al Black (06:53):

Yeah. And so if you want to just get more views of your content, translate it into Hindi and you're going to get way more views on it. That's something that MrBeast has proven with his YouTube strategy. But also languages like Spanish are good. Obviously Portuguese, those are going to reach a much bigger audience. But if you're focused on just generating revenue, if you've got products and services you want to sell, you need to think about the income level of the people you're targeting as well.

Colton Holmes (07:28):

That's interesting.

Al Black (07:30):

If you've got an expensive product and you're targeting people in India, then your chances of selling it are going to be a lot less than if you're targeting people in Germany where there's a lot more income and the higher GDP. And so when we're advising our customers, we're also looking at, okay, so what markets are you going to find most success? And that seems to be something that generates a lot of value for them because they don't having to guess anymore. They're just looking at the facts.

Colton Holmes (08:00):

Yeah.

Al Black (08:00):

I mean, it can be sound obvious, okay, Germany's got the fourth-largest economy in the world. Yeah, it's an obvious one to go for, but you've also got to look at the niche that you're in and marry that with the type of audiences you're going after. Gaming audiences are quite different to people that are interested in financial content, for example.

Colton Holmes (08:20):

Generally speaking, without focusing on a specific product or niche or consumer base, what would the top five languages be for that purpose?

Al Black (08:28):

Yeah. I mean, if you're just looking to get maximum views on YouTube, the most obvious languages are definitely English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Hindi. If you're looking to really focus on countries where you can maximize your revenues, then English is still right up there, but the language order changes. Now you've got maybe Japanese, Korean, Germany, or German, sorry, Italian, French, and then you've still got Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic and Hindi all in the top 10. And for us, it's amazing how many people think that Japanese is quite a small niche language and they don't even consider that it's actually one of the top ones to focus on as well. There's also a lot of YouTube users that speak Japanese on the platform as well compared to other languages. Proportionately, it's actually a really good one, Japanese and Korean, along with German, although there's a lot of German people who speak English pretty well as well.

Colton Holmes (09:33):

Yeah.

Al Black (09:34):

What you'll find is some of the top German channels that we've looked at, they've got their content in English and German so that they're doing both.

Colton Holmes (09:44):

Yeah, it's an interesting point of view that I've never considered is looking at not just how do I generate views, but how do I generate revenue based on what languages I'm localizing my content for? This is the first time I've ever thought of that, and so it's an interesting take on it. Yeah,

Al Black (10:04):

Yeah. Our CEO, Miles, he spent a couple of months actually doing a lot of this research himself. He was researching the data on, okay, so where the video ad spend, what countries are people spending the most in on video? And I mean, it just kind of makes sense, doesn't it? At the end of the day, you need to follow the money and where the advertisers are is where the money is.

Colton Holmes (10:27):

Yeah. You mentioned MrBeast and his localizing of his content, and you mentioned an interesting case study that you have of him, of how he did localize and how he had separate channels for each language, but then pivoted. Can you tell me a little bit about what he did and why?

Al Black (10:43):

He's followed the path of creating separate channels for the top languages and then what he's done is when YouTube's obviously started talking to him about the multi-language audio feature that which they were rolling out into beta, he's seen that and thought, well, this is the future. And so he's dove head first into that. And now if you go to any of his previous channels, like Spanish channels, the content when you click on it will redirect back to his actual main English Channel, but with that audio track selected, so you'll hear the Spanish or the Portuguese version of it. And we've tested this because we've got people in the office who are not native English, they're Portuguese or they're French or whatever, and they've actually tried this out on their own YouTube account. Yeah, it's really interesting, and I think YouTube's going to be pushing this hard this year. 2024 is when they said this would roll out to everybody and it still hasn't.

Colton Holmes (11:44):

Yeah.

Al Black (11:45):

I think we'll have to wait and see on that, but it's definitely rolling its way out to the bigger accounts anyway.

Colton Holmes (11:51):

Would you mind just going into detail of what the multi-language audio is on YouTube and how that works or what it looks like?

Al Black (11:57):

YouTube has had subtitles, captions since the start, really. You can go in there and you can select to have the captions on. I have captions on all the time when I'm watching content, but you can change the language on that if they've translated the content or you can use Google's Auto Machine Translation Engine to do that for you. Essentially it's turning the audio content into translated text format for you to read along with the video, which is really great if you do struggle with your hearing or if you just want to watch it in a noisy environment or something.

Colton Holmes (12:36):

Yeah.

Al Black (12:36):

That's quite often why I've got the captions on. And then obviously the next evolution of that is to turn the translation into an audio format.

Colton Holmes (12:46):

Yep.

Al Black (12:46):

And so multi-language audio allows the user to basically select which language they want to hear the audio in, and you'll then hear the dubbed version of MrBeast in Spanish or whatever it is that you're watching. And it's actually really, really impressive. We've just been working with the official Minecraft channel on some content recently, and if you go to their most recent posts, you can go and try it yourself. You can watch one of their videos and then you can on the fly switch between the different languages and it's really satisfying to actually just see that and to do it.

Colton Holmes (13:25):

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that all rolls out and plays out. I actually want to touch on the fact that you actually have a creative background coming up in sound engineering working in post-production studios, and now actually you have a hand in writing scripts for your marketing material at Voquent and actually even directing some video content for Voquent as well, which I've seen and is awesome, by the way. Well done.

Al Black (13:52):

Thank you.

Colton Holmes (13:52):

You are a creative yourself now getting to work in a role that gets to work with creatives all over the world.

Al Black (14:01):

Yeah. I was a huge music nerd when I was a teenager, absolutely. That and gaming where I spent most of my time. And so I played the guitar and sang in various bands and things, and so that's why I trained as a sound engineer and got involved in the industry back in the nineties. And I didn't work very long as a sound engineer. I transitioned into the business side of things very quickly because I just really enjoyed sales. I was doing some sales jobs part-time and just really gravitated towards that. And then a job came up, which combined both of those things together. And so I started to learn about this thing called voiceover, which I'd never heard of before. And I was like, wow, I've actually been experiencing this all my life and I had no idea that this was a thing.

Colton Holmes (14:54):

Yeah.

Al Black (14:54):

Obviously on the radio and TV, everything, this is a voiceover of course, but I didn't think this was an industry.

Colton Holmes (15:02):

Right.

Al Black (15:02):

When I found out about how big it was, I became really, really passionate about it. I think the whole creative industry is something that I just absolutely love, and I love the fact that we are able to help a lot of creatives and creative teams to see their projects come to life because at the end of the day, so much work goes into creating video content, but it's the voice or it's the presenter or the actor that people want to connect with. That's ultimately the emotion that's in the same, and if you don't have that, it definitely misses something.

Colton Holmes (15:38):

Yeah. I mean, I've probably been in the same space for most of my life. I've consumed voiceover content in various various ways between radio and advertisements and video games, but obviously I think I was always not aware of how much work goes into that and how it is a career that someone pursues. There is voice acting and how important it is to find the right voice actor for this project. And those two things married together takes the production level up a notch. And so I'd love for you to speak into that a little bit and maybe how you guys vet different voice actors or what y'all's process is as you work with voiceover artists.

Al Black (16:22):

Voquent is currently the biggest platform of tested and engineer approved voice actors. That means every time a voice actor joins Voquent, we actually check their profile, make sure they look legitimate, and as soon as they upload any audio, one of our engineers is listening to it and checking it's actually meeting our standards and is accurately described before we make it live on our search. And so quality is really, really important to us. And the reason we've created our platform the way we did is to enable customers to get zeroed in on that voice in their head, so that voice that they've been imagining while they've been creating that script, we want them to be able to just go through a search and find those unique accents, find those tones that they've been thinking about, and just get samples of audio immediately that match that without having to post a project, without having to wade through additions from voice actors that quite often are not going to meet their expectations.

(17:29):

That has enabled us to create a platform where people can just get zeroed in straight away on what they're looking for and then move to the next stage, which is, yeah, we want them to audition the script and we want to hear them say it in this way or that way. And for the voice actors, it's great because it means that they can just sign up for free. They don't have to pay any money, they can just upload their audio and they can get immediately presented with opportunities. And so that's where we found our success. And for us, it's always been super important that the voice actors never have to pay a penny.

Colton Holmes (18:06):

Yeah.

Al Black (18:06):

It's always free for them. Every opportunity we present to them, it's like if they don't want to do it, that's totally fine with us. They've got the choice whether they want to do the job or not. And at the end of the day, having that choice and having the flexibility just to get work from us or not, we think is really the ultimate for a creative or artist that the whole reason behind that, as I said, is just so you can get that voice in your head. And that's really what it's all about at the end of the day. And so unique accents is something I'm really passionate about, and it's been really interesting just hearing those voices. And we've actually, there's the one voice in particular, Hua, and she voices our Ode to the Voices or Here's to the Voices it's called now, Here's to the Voices video. And she's got an incredible voice and an incredible talent, and she's getting very well known in Nigeria. It's her home country. And I can see her going on to great success. I think she's extraordinary.

Colton Holmes (19:14):

Yeah. Is that one of the videos that you sent the link to?

Al Black (19:21):

Yeah, the Here's The Voices one.

Colton Holmes (19:22):

Yeah. I love that one. That's awesome.

Al Black (19:25):

Animated. Yeah. She's got a tremendous voice.

Speaker 3 (19:29):

Raise a glass to the voices, the storytellers that persuade and enchant in our dreams, the monsters and aliens, the witches and queens, the ones that spin a world when it's about to go quiet. The favorite swashbuckling friendly pirate, the voice of the villain that we love to hate, the prophets that will not decide our fate. We hear you. When you whisper the stories in audiobooks and you help the blind see, describing how it looks, when you never give up in our favorite cartoons and your words make a palace filled with thousands of rooms. Always remember, when the mic goes off, your presence lingers forever in our minds and hearts. Life created, together. Cheers to the voices that may not know the power that they hold. Their connections to our emotions that make us brave and bold. Your talent is celebrated no matter where you're from. Captivate the world with voquent.com.

Al Black (20:34):

She's got something very evocative about her delivery and it makes you feel like there's a lot more there.

Colton Holmes (20:40):

Yeah.

Al Black (20:41):

You really get that emotional connection with her voice, and that's what everybody's looking for in their productions, right? I mean, you're creating a story, and it doesn't matter whether it's a boring or seemingly boring corporate video about, it could be about solar panel installations or whatever. You still want to have that human connection in there. You need to get whoever's watching it to be interested to engage with that and get something out of it for themselves. And the way to do that is by using actors or voice actors to sort of bring out that human element.

Colton Holmes (21:14):

Did I read correctly that she also helped write the script for that?

Al Black (21:17):

Yeah. I'd written a poem called Ode to the Voices, and in a very early and very badly made video we first did for Voquent in 2018 when we first launched the platform, that's why I called it Ode to the Voices. I was trying to say, look, this is what makes the platform is the voice actors. It's not me or Miles or anybody else, it's who's on the platform. And so I wrote a poem, Ode to the Voices, and then Hua, she's a spoken word poet as well as a voice actor. And so I asked her if she'd be able to take what I'd written and make it her own, make it something how she would say it. And so she did an amazing job of that.

Colton Holmes (22:03):

Yeah. It was really well done. And what a cool testament to the collaboration that you get to do with artists. And one thing that has been evident in the short time that I've gotten to chat with you between today and yesterday is, man, your passion for these voice over artists, it's just very evident that you care deeply for them and for their success. Which just leads me into this thought of AI and its infiltration of the creative space for better or for worse. I mean, I think there's a lot of misuse happening with AI in various ways beyond just the creative space, but I want to talk about how it is advancing so quickly and as creatives in the creative industry, what are ways that we can embrace it in the correct way and utilize it in a correct way, but also push for regulation among AI and its use?

Al Black (23:01):

Yeah, I think that the governments are going to just take too long to actually do anything real with regulation. There is some signs, and I know that some people we collaborate with about how to protect their artists from AI, and there's some people that we collaborate with in the US about that, and they've been going to Congress and speaking to Congress about what can be done. But I think because the technology's moving so quickly, it's going to be extremely difficult to get anything in place fast enough. And in fact, I think a lot of these AI voiceover companies specifically are going to die before anything's done. And the reason I say that is because a lot of them are taking on huge sums of cash from VCs speculating, because the company has obviously got some kind of AI technology and everybody's just hyped up about AI right now.

(24:01):

And so they're taking that cash and they're pumping out their product. And I don't think a great deal of them are finding success with it because AI voiceovers are not particularly great. And the reason I say that is not because I'm anti-AI, I actually think AI technology is really exciting, and I think there's going to be hugely exciting potential for the creative industries with the technology, but I see it more as a productivity tool than something to replace humans. I think it's going to accelerate our ability to be creative, but it's not going to just take our jobs. And so I think the biggest threat from AI to voiceover and voice actors particularly is voice cloning technology. And so I don't know if you've seen some of the platforms out there, I won't mention their names. I think most people know who the main platforms are. If they want to do a Google, they can find out for themselves.

Colton Holmes (24:58):

Yeah.

Al Black (24:59):

I don't really want to give them any more air time. But yeah, you've been using some fairly unethical methods to promote their voice cloning technology. They've cloned celebrities who are dead or entrepreneurs who have died, like Steve Jobs. I've seen a clone of his voice. And then you've obviously got, and we were talking about this yesterday with the music sites where they've taken Johnny Cash and he's singing the Barbie Girl song, yeah. And that kind of thing. And obviously there's some real problems with that ethically. If I was Johnny Cash's relative, I don't think I'd be particularly happy to see that. I mean, and it's also a misappropriation of their voice and their fame, if you like, and they're leveraging that.

Colton Holmes (26:03):

I mean even voice to the second degree, a little bit deeper than just their physical voice, but also their voice in the sense of what they represented, I suppose.

Al Black (26:15):

Yeah, exactly. You're taking that kind of brand, like what they're known for, and you're misappropriating it and misusing it. And I think that's really something that voice actors or actors in general, it's not just voice actors, but actors in general are really concerned about. It's not just about voice cloning, obviously, it's about digital cloning as well.

Colton Holmes (26:36):

Yeah.

Al Black (26:36):

The film studios already clone the actors and they use AI technology to edit their content, but if you can just take somebody's digital self and clone them and then never book them for work again, I mean, that's a massive problem.

Colton Holmes (26:53):

Right.

Al Black (26:54):

You now own their digital self and you can then just use it whenever you feel like it.

Colton Holmes (26:59):

Yeah.

Al Black (26:59):

As an actor, that's horrifying.

Colton Holmes (27:01):

Yeah.

Al Black (27:02):

And it's the same with whether you're a voice actor or a traditional actor. And I think that's why the protests last year lasted for so long because they really wanted PsychAftra to stand up for them and do something about this.

Colton Holmes (27:15):

Yeah.

Al Black (27:16):

And there were some agreements put in place, but I don't think they were sufficient to really protect people. And I think they gave up a little bit too easy, to be honest, to the big studios. But here we are. I think artists are going to have to, and the representing agents are going to have to stand up for them and really make sure the contracts are, particularly when it comes to AI, are very stringent and they know exactly what they're agreeing to. And so we've updated all our terms and conditions to make sure that clients know that they can never take our voices audio and go and use it for training generative AI or to clone their voice if they want to make some edits to their audiobook that they recorded. And this unfortunately is something that we're finding is more and more of a problem.

(28:03):

And that's why I think there is a lot of fear from actors in the industry because a lot of clients are doing this without really thinking about the consequences of it.

Colton Holmes (28:14):

Yeah.

Al Black (28:16):

They're just thinking about their project and trying to get things done quickly, and they're not realizing how much an infringement it is on the artist to just misappropriate their digital selves and do what they want with it.

Colton Holmes (28:29):

Yeah.

Al Black (28:30):

And it's particularly concerning when it's now becoming so easy to clone people. Like I was reading the other day, I won't name the company, but they can clone your voice within 10 seconds with just 10 seconds of audio.

Colton Holmes (28:42):

That's crazy.

Al Black (28:44):

And so you can think of the ramifications of that. If you could just have some 10 seconds of your podcast, let's take Colton's voice and then just stick it onto the platform. Now I've got Colton's voice, what can I do with this? Well, let's go and see what money we can get out of his family.

Colton Holmes (29:03):

Not much.

Al Black (29:07):

Well, that's the scary thing though, isn't it? It's right there now for any of these really unethical criminals to take advantage of, and that's why we need regulation. But I just don't think it's coming fast enough.

Colton Holmes (29:20):

Yeah. It may feel like a victimless crime, but in the end, it's robbing someone of a lot of different things, but one of the top ones being their work.

Al Black (29:32):

Yeah. And I think anybody in the creative space is definitely going to respect that.

Colton Holmes (29:36):

Yeah.

Al Black (29:37):

They're going to realize that. And one of the things that we to educate our customers a lot on when it comes to voiceover is when it comes to commercials, for example, you'd often see contracts sent over to us, which said that they wanted to pay for the session fee, and then they also wanted usage rights in perpetuity worldwide. And what that basically means is that they could take that piece of audio content and broadcast it on any platform they want, anytime they want forever.

Colton Holmes (30:07):

Yeah.

Al Black (30:08):

And the artist is not going to be compensated anymore for the work. And so we always push back on that and we get them to put a timeline in there, how much time do you actually need this for and be realistic about which regions you're going to be promoting us in.

Colton Holmes (30:23):

Yeah.

Al Black (30:23):

And it's amazing how many customers just don't want to think about that. They just want to go, I don't know. I don't care. I just want the right so I don't have to think about it.

Colton Holmes (30:32):

Yeah.

Al Black (30:33):

And the same thing's happening with the AI technology, and that's why I think people just want things too easy almost. They're just trying to make things easy for themselves, not thinking about their actual audience, and they create people behind the projects.

Colton Holmes (30:49):

Yeah. Well, Al, it's been a pleasure getting to chat with you, and I love to see how much you and Voquent are doing on the accessibility front, but also on caring for these artists in the VO community, just between regulations and contracts and making sure that they are protected and their work is protected and in the AI space. And so I've loved getting to chat with you today. For those who are listening, can you share how they can connect with you online and on socials or with Voquent online?

Al Black (31:23):

Yeah. If they want to connect with me, probably the best place is LinkedIn. That's generally my only social, it's all business for me. I'm on LinkedIn, and they can just find me, Al Black. If they want to connect with Voquent, the best places are probably YouTube or Twitter. Those are the two biggest growing audiences we've got.

Colton Holmes (31:45):

Great. And I'll link those in the show notes for everyone else too. Al, thanks again. It was a pleasure. I appreciate it.

Al Black (31:51):

Yeah, it's been a real pleasure. Thanks a lot, Colton.

Colton Holmes (31:56):

Well, that's it for today's episode of The Rough Draft. To learn more about our guests and to find links and resources related to the conversation, check out rev.com/podcast. That's R-E-V.com/podcast. If you enjoy today's conversation, be sure to rate and subscribe in order to stay up to date with the latest episodes and help other creatives find us. Thank you for listening, and we look forward to seeing you again on the next episode of The Rough Draft.

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