Make yourself heard

Sujan Sengupta tries out the app

Here's an easy riddle. What's common between public service announcers at train stations, radio jockeys, and voiceover artistes for television commercials? The answer is that all three industries employ people who are essentially in a faceless profession. The human voice is the only tool they ply their trade with. Their looks matter as little as earphones do when, say, you're reading a newspaper. So there is an ingrained sense of anonymity, but that makes noticeability an issue. How do you go about peddling your craft when you're a voice recording artiste? Or corollarily, as a client, how do you separate the wheat from the chaff and find the right person for the job? Those are the questions that Voyzapp - a new web-based application - seeks to solve by acting as a conduit between the two symbiotic professions.

The methodology is simple enough. As an artiste, all you have to do is create a profile and then upload voice recording samples, mentioning how much you charge and what your usual turnaround time is. These details then get uploaded on the site's database so that when, for example, a documentary filmmaker is looking for a narrator, he can sieve through the different options and pick the person who suits his needs the best. Both parties stand to gain, so in the end, everyone's a winner. But does the webpage function in a seamless manner? Or are there chinks in the armour? That's what we ask 26-year-old music producer Sujan Sengupta to find out after conducting a test drive of the app for us.

The different search bars on the sit

Sengupta tells us that his initial reaction on opening the site was confusion. "I couldn't figure out at first how I was supposed to go about the entire process," he confesses, adding that the layout isn't conducive to understanding immediately what the service has to offer. "But then once I fill in all my requirements in the different search bars like language, category, gender and age, it becomes clear that I can select a particular artiste and get the job done," he clarifies.

The Mumbai resident continues by saying that it's also really helpful that one person can upload multiple voice samples. "That way, an artiste can display his diversity to show his proficiency in different languages and how versatile he is with varying genres, helping him get more work," he says.

Sengupta also tells us that the fact that an artiste can specify his payment structure and turnaround time helps bypass a lot of unnecessary conversation with potential clients. "A voiceover artiste, especially in radio and advertising, is a make-or-break component of the entire product. It's thus necessary for a producer to find the exact type of voice he has in mind, and having a vast number of choices helps pinpoint what you're looking for.

That's one of the main utilities of this site, and secondly, it saves a lot of time. The fact that it is quite utility-specific in terms of why you are there and what you want means that there's no beating around the bush," he explains, adding that he sees Voyzapp becoming a pretty widely used tool in
the aligned industries in the near future.

Also check out

There are some other Indian websites that serve as a marketplace for voice recording artistes. These include voicehired.com and voiceartistes.com. For international options, check out voices.com and voicebunny.com.

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