TikTalk: The woman who sued TikTok for using her voice

Twenty Thousand Hertz

Dallas Taylor

Music, Design, Arts, Music Commentary

4.8 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 24 August 2022

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2018, voiceover artist Bev Standing recorded 10,000 sentences for the Chinese Institute of Acoustics. Bev was told the recordings would be used for a translation app, but three years later, she was shocked to discover that she had become the default voice of TikTok in North America. On TikTok, Bev heard herself saying all kinds of wild and inappropriate things. So, she decided to sue. In this episode, Bev tells her story, and we hear from the voice who replaced her. Follow Dallas on Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn. Watch our video shorts on YouTube, and join the discussion on Reddit and Facebook. Sign up for Twenty Thousand Hertz+ to support the show & get our entire catalog ad-free. If you know what this week's mystery sound is, tell us at mystery.20k.org. Listen to Ahead of Its Time, a new podcast by Setapp, on all of your favorite platforms. Get a $75 credit to upgrade your job post at indeed.com/hertz. Find the right doctor, right now with at zocdoc.com/20k. Episode transcript, music, and credits can be found here: https://www.20k.org/episodes/tiktalk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to 20,000 Hertz.
0:11.1	My husband passed away in 2008 in July, and in September, it would have been my 26th wedding anniversary.
0:18.0	And I didn't want to sit at home and be very sad and have my kids worried about me.
0:23.8	And I said, you know what, the best thing I can do is just be busy, try and make the day go away.
0:30.0	And for some reason, the only thing I could find was a voiceover weekend workshop in downtown Toronto.
0:42.9	So I hit okay and went. That's voice artist Bev Standing. It was a very small group. There was only five of us. We were supposed to be six.
0:48.9	One person didn't show up, so there was lots of mic time. But while I was trying to read these
0:53.3	scripts and be people, I wasn't,
0:55.0	and try and, you know, put on a good face,
0:57.7	I couldn't worry about everything that was going on at home.
1:00.5	And I couldn't hold that sadness so close to the surface.
1:04.6	And I found it very healing.
1:06.7	And that's why I started doing it.
1:14.5	Bencky. And that's why I started doing it. Bev started voice acting as a way to cope.
1:17.5	Soon enough, she realized she had a natural talent for it.
1:21.2	I'm able to close all my emotional doors and open the one that I need at the time.
1:25.8	I'm able to jump in and out of scripts
1:28.4	very quickly, and I realized rather late in life that this is something I love to do. Before long,
1:36.9	voice acting was her full-time job. I got really lucky and hooked up with a lot of the right
1:42.4	people that gave me great guidance and led me
1:44.9	along the way. Someone ended up recommending me to somebody who sent me an audition, and it was
1:50.8	like putting a worm on a hook. It was like, hey, this can be fun. By 2017, Bev was working for
	...

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