How a BlissBlend ad taught me a lesson

One day I received a message from an agency saying the client loved my voiceover and wanted to use it for their BlissBlend activewear commercial. Great! Except… I had never provided this voiceover. I realised that the agency had taken my audition recording and used it directly on the ad. On the one hand I was thrilled - they were arranging just to pay me for the audition file I’d already done, and didn’t need any further work from me. Tidy! On the other hand though, I realised I was incredibly lucky that this agency were honest and respectful of my usage rights. They could have gone ahead and used the audition recording without paying me for it, in the hope that I would never see the final ad and realise I’d been ripped off. It taught me to be careful to either watermark or crop my audition recordings going forward so that I never provide a useable recording. Not everyone out there will be as conscientious as this agency - and who knows how many of my auditions are floating around out there already…?