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Japanese voice-acting service adds new languages, announces investment

Junya Mori Junya Mori
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See the original story in Japanese. Voip is a crowdsourcing service for voice-acting work. Since its launch back in January, it has acquired more than 1,500 registered actors in partnership with actor agencies and vocational schools. The startup behind the service is called Grood, and it is trying to provide an easy way to fulfill voice acting jobs in areas like social game development or media production. The startup announced yesterday that it has added foreign-language voice acting to its menu. Available languages now include English, Mandarin, French, and Italian. To receive orders for narration jobs in foreign languages, the startup has partnered with some agencies outside Japan. With the launch of its foreign-language narration service, the startup plans to extend its customer base into business sectors such as education, publishing, and translation. Voip also announced on Friday that it has received an undisclosed (small) amount of an investment from East Ventures. This follows the previous funding from Incubate Fund back in March of 2012. The startup’s CEO Yuya Haraguchi further explains: Our first target is smartphone app/game developers, and the education sector follows. With our inclusion of foreign languages, we expect app developers or publishing companies expanding globally choose…

microphone
Photo by sparetomato.

See the original story in Japanese.

Voip is a crowdsourcing service for voice-acting work. Since its launch back in January, it has acquired more than 1,500 registered actors in partnership with actor agencies and vocational schools. The startup behind the service is called Grood, and it is trying to provide an easy way to fulfill voice acting jobs in areas like social game development or media production.

The startup announced yesterday that it has added foreign-language voice acting to its menu. Available languages now include English, Mandarin, French, and Italian. To receive orders for narration jobs in foreign languages, the startup has partnered with some agencies outside Japan. With the launch of its foreign-language narration service, the startup plans to extend its customer base into business sectors such as education, publishing, and translation.

Voip also announced on Friday that it has received an undisclosed (small) amount of an investment from East Ventures. This follows the previous funding from Incubate Fund back in March of 2012.

The startup’s CEO Yuya Haraguchi further explains:

Our first target is smartphone app/game developers, and the education sector follows. With our inclusion of foreign languages, we expect app developers or publishing companies expanding globally choose us when developing their content.

For narration orders of consisting of less than 9,000 words, they will deliver within three business days of order. They also have a sort of quality assurance system, where you can ask them to re-do the recording until you’re satisfied with the quality of the outcome.

They will set up a card payment feature on the website soon, and they are also planning to launch new services like translation and proof-reading by native speakers.

Some of our readers may recall that we recently interviewed Ryota Ichioka, the CEO of illustration-focused crowdsoucing service MugenUp. Unlike existing crowdsourcing sites for general purposes, these services typically standardize the ordering process and visualize the skills of crowdsouced workers. This makes things more convenient for both clients and workers.

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Docomo partners with Line, finds a creative way to relieve network strain

Rick Martin Rick Martin
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Back in January of 2012, Japanese carrier NTT Docomo (TYO:9437) attributed a network disruption to free VoIP applications, with popular chat app Line being the first one that it cited. Line, which launched back in mid-2011, was just picking up steam at the time with about 15 million downloads reported at that point, and 5.5 million of those in Japan. Since then of course, the application’s download count is about ten times as high – in Japan, where it has more than 45 million; and abroad, where there are over than 150 million. And while Docomo has itself had time to solidify its network infrastructure to accommodate the kind of data load that apps like Line demand, it can’t be an easy task. So it was interesting to see today that Docomo has decided to partner with Line Corporation, as announced in an event earlier today. There are a few aspects to the companies’ partnership, but the most interesting collaboration will be an original Line application for Android that will include a call button in app that users can use to make voice calls. The goal here, as Docomo itself notes, is to reduce the load on their network. This…

Docomo Line
Docomo CEO Kaoru Kato, photo by Keizai.biz

Back in January of 2012, Japanese carrier NTT Docomo (TYO:9437) attributed a network disruption to free VoIP applications, with popular chat app Line being the first one that it cited. Line, which launched back in mid-2011, was just picking up steam at the time with about 15 million downloads reported at that point, and 5.5 million of those in Japan.

Since then of course, the application’s download count is about ten times as high – in Japan, where it has more than 45 million; and abroad, where there are over than 150 million. And while Docomo has itself had time to solidify its network infrastructure to accommodate the kind of data load that apps like Line demand, it can’t be an easy task. So it was interesting to see today that Docomo has decided to partner with Line Corporation, as announced in an event earlier today.

There are a few aspects to the companies’ partnership, but the most interesting collaboration will be an original Line application for Android that will include a call button in app that users can use to make voice calls. The goal here, as Docomo itself notes, is to reduce the load on their network. This will be put in place in September, and will allow users to call other Docomo users for free. Ostensibly, the regular Line voice call button (for VoIP calls) will still be in place.

This is a pretty fascinating maneuver on Docomo’s part, as telcos the world over adjust to a mobile industry shifting from voice to data [1].

The other aspect of the Docomo-Line agreement will bring another original Line application to Docomo’s Raku-Raku smartphones, which target users who aren’t accustomed to smartphones, especially the country’s large senior population. This app will implement preventative measures to limit transactions amounts that may have resulted from accidental purchases.

A million reading manga on mobile

In addition to striking this partnership with Japan’s largest carrier, this marks a pretty good day for Line. The company also announced that its new manga application has reached a million downloads, this just a little over a month after the service initially launched in Japan.

As for Docomo, the telco isn’t doing too shabby either with more than 12 million LTE subscribers as of April 20th. Oh, and the company announced some new phones today too. But of course, still no iPhone.

(Download chart as image)

For more information on the growth of Line, please check out our interactive Line Timeline which chronicles its growth from its launch back in 2011 up until the present day.

  1. As one example, check out this ZDnet piece from yesterday saying that such messaging apps would cost Indian telcos more than a billion dollars this year. Of course that’s a far different mobile landscape than Japan, but it will be interesting to see if any other telecoms try what Docomo is doing. (Perhaps some already have? Let us know in the comments if you know of any)  ↩

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Meet the Japanese startup aspiring to bring new voices to your games

Junya Mori Junya Mori
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See original story in Japanese. The high penetration of smartphone and tablet devices has made it a lot easier to enjoy rich visual and audio content. But from the point of view of game developers, it can be incredibly tough to differentiate your works from others, as great artwork and illustrations alone might not be enough. Many of them are trying to improve the sound of their games as well, in order to improve their content offerings. Tokyo-based startup, Grood, has recently introduced an online service for voice acting jobs called Voip. The startup won the top prize at Incubate Camp, a demo event held by local startup accelerator Incubate Fund last March. The startup is also known for its smartphone smash-hit app 全国告白白書 (or literally ‘All-Japan Love Confession Whitepaper’) which allows users to experience virtual love confessions to beautiful girls on the app. Voip has partnered with voice actor agencies and schools nationwide, and has enlisted more than 450 actors and actresses. By taking advantage of the country’s largest such network of this kind, the startup provides a large base from which social games or MMORPG developers can source quality voice actors. Prior to placing an order, a game…

See original story in Japanese.

voip-300x240

The high penetration of smartphone and tablet devices has made it a lot easier to enjoy rich visual and audio content. But from the point of view of game developers, it can be incredibly tough to differentiate your works from others, as great artwork and illustrations alone might not be enough. Many of them are trying to improve the sound of their games as well, in order to improve their content offerings.

Tokyo-based startup, Grood, has recently introduced an online service for voice acting jobs called Voip. The startup won the top prize at Incubate Camp, a demo event held by local startup accelerator Incubate Fund last March. The startup is also known for its smartphone smash-hit app 全国告白白書 (or literally ‘All-Japan Love Confession Whitepaper’) which allows users to experience virtual love confessions to beautiful girls on the app.

Voip has partnered with voice actor agencies and schools nationwide, and has enlisted more than 450 actors and actresses. By taking advantage of the country’s largest such network of this kind, the startup provides a large base from which social games or MMORPG developers can source quality voice actors.

Prior to placing an order, a game developer can ask an actor or actress to read a script as a sort of audition. When the developer chooses their favored actor, that person will then be notified about the job details. The actors can choose the work that they really want, and the client can choose from the best among all audio pieces that actors have recorded and submitted.

voip_screenshot

Although there appears to be more overall demand for quality voice-acting these days, notable voice actors and actresses frequently featured on TV or in well-known anime charge very high guarantee fees for their performance, and that is likely beyond the reach of most social game developers.

There are tens of thousands of voice actors in Japan, but only a fraction of them can make a living without doing other work on the side. The industry is very much seniority-based, and younger actors find it hard to survive even if they are popular.

So this service is a natural fit for voice actors in need of work and social game developers who are in need of quality performances. One job on the site has received 213 applications within 10 days of being published, which is a very impressive total.

Voip is currently working on some projects for Pokelabo, a well-known social game developer also backed by Incubate Fund.

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