watermarking audio

[VODood]

What do you do to watermark audio for auditions, ie Voices.com?

 

[JeffJasper]

That's a great question. I'd like to know too.

I'm on Voice123.com and respond to all personal audition requests and some of the more interesting open auditions, but I never watermark my auditions. Laughable as it may be in these days of the internet and intellectual property theft -- whoops, I mean "file sharing" -- I still do business based on trust. Yeah, I know, that's probably a dying concept. Fact is, the production community as an industry is not that large. People talk. And the bad eggs I've known put themselves out of business fairly quickly.

That said, I am rather careful about the cattle calls I respond to. I avoid those who obviously cannot spell or write proper English. I never respond to those advertising anything in any way shady or blue. I never respond to religious organizations. I occasionally respond to "motivational speakers" but always quote them top price, cuz I know they're likely to be trouble. I never respond to nightclubs or club DJs.

The bad eggs tend to tip their hand, if you're paying attention. The last time I got burned, a couple of years ago, the producer was a guy fresh out of film school doing a spot for a custom motorcycle shop whose motto was "In God we trust, all others pay cash." First the guy hammered me on price for L.A. at $100, then really liked all my hardsell takes but wanted still more, and he then stiffed me. It was the first time I'd been stiffed in a good 7 years. Previous to that was an ambulance service. I never do ambulance services any more unless it's for a TV station that I have a monthly contract with.

So don't worry, you're GONNA get burned! But so far for me, it hasn't been very often. And the steady clients that I've generated by subscibing to an audition service have far outweighed the risk of the occasional scortched pants. Most of the clients I've met thru Voice123 have turned into loyal customers, some of whom I've had now for years.

Back to the original question: I've fantasized about just laying a urinal flush sfx underneath, but always chicken out.

JJ

 

[voiceguy]

How about the low, steady growl of a Rottweiler, just audible enough to keep someone from using it.

I've never watermarked any audition audio before, but I think it's worth it to at least try something.

We used to run a 10K tone on our spots we would give to our clients that wanted to "keep a copy for themselves" on 1/4" reel.

The only reason we figured someone wanted a 1/4" copy was to take the spot to another radio station, without paying us for the production.

That tone was enough to drive other stations nuts.

These days, I don't know what you could do, other than...whatever you used to do before everyone had mp3s, and before everyone started "sampling".

Hell, I had a couple of promos I produced for my station in Houston, featured on an FMQB sampler.

A few months later, I got word from some folks I know in Dallas, that a commercial running on a station there, had a voice in it that sounded an awful lot like mine.

I found out that the production guy at the station actually stole my bit from the FMQB CD, used it as a setup bit in his spot, and then the client liked it so much, they started running it...to promote their other stores...

IN HOUSTON.

Caught the guy red-handed.

I called him up, told him I had an agent, AND a lawyer looking into it, and that the invoice would be arriving shortly.

The spots were changed.

 

[VODood]

I sometimes will use some "pro tools" beeps that I lifted from some prod while with CC years ago. I'll lay the tones sporadically throughtout the audio file, mixed low but audible.

just curious what everyone else did.