“Study dubbing earns 40,000 per month”, is this pie delicious?

Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “semi Finance” (ID: Banshu-Caijing), Author: Li Ying.

Learning loli music, economic independence is not a dream?

A friend of A Jin’s told her that their taxi drivers were unable to go out to pick up passengers due to the epidemic, so they started buying microphones for audio books. This made Ah Jin, who had just signed a full-time anchor contract in the previous two years, received a lot of shock: In the sound market that used to be “big and big”, now anyone can do it?

If an industry is not lively, just look at its advertisements. In the early years, except for professionals, almost no one cares about the audio dubbing training. Now these courses are popular on social platforms such as Douyin and Weibo: “Learning dubbing with zero basics, challenging high-paid side jobs”, “Learning dubbing, earn four a month Wan”…Such “tempting” advertisements abound.

Picture from Zhihu Zidu Pengpeng

Actually, as Ah Jin thought, the sound market today is different from the past. The “low-threshold sideline” proclaimed by training institutions has attracted many mothers, college students and other people who want to make extra money.

Yang Lu, a college student, often brushes up such dubbing advertisements. The dubbing teacher in the advertisements skillfully changes various voice lines such as Loliyin and Yujieyin, claiming that after three or four months of sound training, he can master all kinds of voices. Line, then dubbing, audiobooks and other side businesses are continuously connected, easily achieving economic independence.

After being expressly hinted by advertisements several times, Yang Lu, who is keen on animation, finally couldn’t hold back. She bought a trial lesson of an online dubbing course for one yuan. On the one hand, she wanted to use her own voice to interpret her favorite role in the future. On the one hand, they are “motivated by money” and want to make some pocket money. When she entered the live broadcast room on time at 8 o’clock that night, there were more than 60 friends who were attracted by the broadcasting and dubbing classes online at the same time, and brushed “111” in the live broadcast room from time to time to show their existence.

In the eyes of professional voice actor Konger, it is quite normal for him to audition hundreds of times. When he first came into contact with the audition, it took two months to receive the first book. There was an animation dubbing project given by a teacher before, which required three auditions of male lead lines, and he recorded 300 times only the last one. Xuaner handed it in to the teacher 6 times before and after, and was beaten back. Every time, there were dozens of hundreds of attempts.

Before the audition audiobook and dubbing, Konger also played pia play for a long time, helping people to interpret the words on some playing platforms, dubbing the script, and sometimes can get it Some compensation. (The director of pia drama guides and corrects the seiyuu’s sense of drama, intonation, and vocal parts. Tourists go to the wheat, accompanied by a beautiful and suitable BGM, emotionally engage in plot dialogue or read aloud. The daily said pia Dramas are usually entertaining and can be improvised.)

Kong’er told the author that there are many such accompaniment platforms on the Internet, such as yy and whales, etc. The remuneration varies from platform to platform, and is about 20-50 yuan per hour. “Playing with you is also required to audition. It is not that there are singles all day long. To put it bluntly, it is whoever will do it.”

“If you don’t have this bit of perseverance and perseverance, why would you be dubbing?” Konger has always been full of love and awe for this industry. Now that more and more people are flocking to the so-called part-time job and making money, he does not Not optimistic.

How valuable is the sound realization?

Of course, not everyone who has taken a dubbing class has found nothing.

Tang Yi told Yang LuIt seems to be an “alumni” of that institution. After studying for four months, I felt that the stories I told were about the same as those in Himalayas and lazy people. Tang Yi felt that the time had come. “Level is too abstract, I won’t say that I will wait until I have reached the level before trying it out, because I don’t know Party A’s standards, and everyone doesn’t know it.”

Adhering to the credo of “It is better to ask for yourself”, Tang Yi bypassed the training institutions and took the initiative to contact various audition opportunities. After trying more than 70 notes, he finally managed to get the first single. At that time, the six-month dubbing course had not yet ended, but in order to concentrate on recording the book, Tang Yi took a leave of absence at the training institution.

What Tang Yi wants to read is a novel that is still being serialized. He signed a contract with the studio. He recorded the dry sound (original human voice without any processing) and gave it to the studio, recording two or three per day Hours, you can get 2000 yuan income per month. Tang Yi told the author that most of the salary books outsourced by the studio are basic salary books, that is, the anchor only needs to record the dry sound and get a fixed hourly income. After the dry sound is handed over to the studio, there is no need to be responsible for other content, nor will it Regardless of the listening situation of the work. He can record the current book for about 5 months, so that he can earn back the tuition of 6,480 yuan and the recording equipment of 1,500 yuan, which can be regarded as fulfilling his original intention of realizing his interests.

After the outbreak of the epidemic last year, Ah Jin was transferred from a part-time anchor to a full-time contract anchor on the Himalaya platform to record audio books. Her fans in the Himalayas have grown to more than 20,000. However, there are many fans and not much income.

A Jin confessed to the author that now her monthly income is between 3000 yuan and 5000 yuan. Faced with the pressure of life, she sometimes has to do other jobs. Now Ajin is also trying to produce content on platforms such as Xiaohongshu to expand her career boundaries.

Different from the basic salary book recorded by Tang Yi, Jin chose a form called “divided into books” in the industry. In addition to receiving a small portion of the basic salary from the platform, the recording into a book will also receive a certain percentage of commission based on the listening and payment of the work. A Jin said that the basic salary is generally 80-100 yuan/hour for dry tone, which is increased to 10-15%. Tang Yi told the author that there are factors in this form of gambling. If you become popular, you can make a lot of money. If you don’t, you will earn a basic salary of three or four thousand.

A Jin himself is actually very aware of the current situation. “The recording fee is not high, and the production cost is constantly increasing.The competition is really fierce. If there is no fan base, it will be difficult to increase sales. We can only rely on the most basic recording fee, which is basically ‘power generation for love’. “

The production cost mentioned by A Jin refers to a series of post-production work after recording dry sound, such as noise reduction, removing wheat spray, saliva, tooth, current and other unnecessary reverberation, etc., more complicated It needs further editing and processing. In the later stage, you can do it yourself, or you can find someone to do it. The price of finding someone to do it is generally 25-40 yuan/hour for simple configuration, 45-60 yuan/hour for medium configuration, and more expensive for fine configuration. If multiple roles are required in the book, sometimes the anchor needs to find different voice actors to perform, and the cost must be borne by himself.

The high investment in the early stage makes the risk of the anchor increase. Regarding this, Jin is also very helpless, “Everyone is doing this, you don’t make fine products, you can’t make it harder.”

On the other leading platform of audiobooks, “Lazy Listening”, “Mint Lemon You” (hereinafter referred to as “Mint”) has 2.35 million fans. At that time, with the popularity of the TV series “The Legend of Chu Qiao”, the anchor mint of the audio version of “11 Special Agents” became a hit, and he became a first-class anchor on the platform from a young age.

The number of fans on the platform is already a TOP3 mint, and the income from audiobooks is about 200,000 a year. “The income of audiobooks is not very stable. If there are less recordings this month, the recording fee will be lower. Also, due to copyright and user listening habits, the income of female anchors will be much lower than that of male anchors.” Mint told the author that the current lazy listener The book uses the form of “recording fee + sharing fee + reward” for major anchors, and the sharing is only used by exclusive contracted anchors, and it is divided into files ranging from 5% to 20%. If it has its own copyright and platform cooperation If so, it can reach 50%.

In addition to audiobooks, Mint will also pick up some commercial dubbing separately, and also signed a radio station to make a show called “Know”. Although Mint’s industry status and ability can definitely pick up some more commercial dubbing, she still regards audiobooks as her main field.

When talking about the industry barriers of audiobooks and dubbing, Mint admitted the gap frankly. “In the case of commercial distribution, why don’t people go to the audiobook anchors instead of those who have graduated from a major in broadcasting and hosting? A person who records audiobooks is not enough to support its voice and support the work of this industry , This is a completely different category.”

Hidden behind the sweet voice of the audiobook anchor may not be as high-paid and beautiful as everyone imagined. Mint told the author that there are many small anchors who have been around her for several years and earn only a few thousand yuan a month. This is the true status quo of the industry. “People who are used to seeing high-income people may feel confused when they hear this number, but in fact, audiobooks are a niche profession, and it’s just the past few years. Those who can eat crabs, Only participate in this industry very earlySome of them, and it was a coincidence. “

How big is the sound economy cake?

The sound field has not escaped the impact of the epidemic, but just like the live broadcast, it seems to be another safe haven.

“Suddenly I felt that everyone had come in, and related training institutions suddenly became very prosperous. Douyin and WeChat were full of advertisements for voice realization.” After the epidemic, Jin felt the industry. obvious changes.

But when the wind of the sound economy is blown by more and more training institutions, can this industry really enclave so smoothly?

Mint thinks otherwise. “First of all, you have to see how many friends around you use listening software. If the user base is not so exaggerated, then it is conceivable that there will not be so many people who pay for it, so relatively speaking, the income of the practitioners is also Not very high. Anyway, there is no way to compare with the benefits of short videos, because this is a phenomenon-level problem.”

In Ah Jin’s view, there is not much talent gap in this industry. What is lacking is actually the improvement of the consumer group’s consumption power. Mint mentioned that the current listeners are a relatively fixed group, mostly in their teens to thirties. There are not many people who can “krypton gold” for this.

As for manpower demand, Mint said that different people have different opinions. Yousheng is a relatively mobile industry. Many people record a few books here, and they give up when they can’t get the book or the price can’t be raised. “There are actually a lot of anchors in this industry who get out of the pit within one or two years, so new people will continue to come out to fill their positions.” But a new phenomenon has appeared in this industry in the past two years. For example, the Pomodoro platform began to record audiobooks with AI. The cost has become cheaper and the demand for manpower is also declining.

The same is true for voice, and so is the dubbing. Radio host Yao Di mentioned in an interview with CCTV that the dubbing market is not big enough to support such a large number of voice actors. “The national broadcasting and hosting art college graduates at least 1,000 people every year, but the number of active voice actors currently does not add up to a hundred.”

Everyone rushed forward, and the level of professionalism was also uneven. Well-known voice actor Zhang Jie once stated on Weibo that many people think that dubbing is just changing the voice line, and knowing it does not know why. Mint also said that Mandarin,Speaking, vocalization, and emotional integration all need professional teachers to guide them, and they cannot be easily mastered in a few months of training. Just like when Konger used to go to the offline training class, many students in the class couldn’t let go of some large-scale lines. “Some lines are cursing, and some lines are crazy yelling. When interpreting these lines, the teacher will also ask for physical movements in order to help us find the feeling.” The seemingly simple open mouth is actually one thing. A deeper performance.

A report from CCTV in early December 2020 pierced the bright prospects described in the dubbing course advertisement, and problems such as training loans, difficulty in refunding, and difficulty in starting newcomers were brought to the table. But until now, such dubbing advertisements are still emerging in endlessly. In the comments below, many people are enthusiastically consulting, weaving the dream of making money with voice.

*Yang Lu, Konger, Tang Yi, A Jin are pseudonyms