5$ prices

[criskcracker]

@NewEraofContent

What about raising the lower price limit, envato? Say, 15$ or so…

Hey @NewEraofContent, for more info about why Envato refuses to set a reasonable lower price limit for music, you can check out the conversation about it in this thread:

Top Sellers Should Be Based On Revenue NOT Number Of Sales!

Price dumping is a scourge. Not only because devalues our work, but also because it results in “top sellers” that do not actually make much money - not for authors nor for Envato - as well as search results that favor cheap items. If enough of us agree - perhaps Envato will listen. +1 if you agree

The TL;DR version of it is that setting a minimum price would violate anti-trust laws to do with price-fixing and fair trading practices (according to Envato’s legal team). Personally, I think it’s an overly cautious interpretation of those laws, since P5 don’t seem to have a problem with setting a lower limit in an ADP marketplace. But that’s just my opinion.

A more interesting point in that thread is @EightBallAudio’s post about how Envato is encouraging price dumping by advertising “top sellers” by sales numbers instead of revenue.

I really hope that the new CEO @hichameassi will consider that rewarding revenue instead of sales numbers would be better for everyone and maybe start to implement the drive towards competition based on money in the bank, rather than units shifted.
@MojoSoundtrack highlighted the benefits of making that change really nicely in the following post:

@MojoSoundtrack

The problem is that temporary price dumping is a technique that can be used to game the system in several ways and often purely done to start trending/reach the popular list, the problem is increasing the more authors struggle with visibility it seems.

This problem is not going away with wishful thinking and telling authors to do “mindful pricing”. The current system does not reward those who actually have intentions to earn money for Envato.

So yes lets put an end to this, if not, there will be only price dumped tracks and old top sellers in the popular list in the future (like now but worse). And nobody wants that, including customers.

ADP is great, but the current search system needs to adapt to ADP.

EDIT : I wrote this list in one of the other revenue threads so just reposting it here:

Benefits of sorting revenue instead of sales numbers:

1. Envato will earn more money
2. Authors will earn more money and think more business minded.
3. High quality will float upwards more easily in the search engine.
4. Customers will benefit, it will be less hard to find high quality tracks.
5. Authors will find the sweet spot for the market price of quality music.
6. Saturation of the market will be less, because authors will ultimately prioritise quality over quantity.
7. Self purchasers and copy cats will have a harder time doing their monkey business.

Many authors have been calling for this for a long time now. It would be great if someone from the Envato team could get involved in the conversation, at least to explain why they have a bias towards $5 tracks built into their platform and seem to be actively encouraging price dumping with categories like “Hot under $20”. How about a “Great quality over $30” category?