After two rejections for unknown reasons, I don't see a path forward with AudioJungle.

Envato Authors AudioJungle
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It’s apparent by these forums that a lot of folks get rejected and have no idea why. The official reasoning by AudioJungle reviewers seems to be some vague template response. If we need more help, there doesn’t seem to be a way to ask AudioJungle why they rejected it. Instead, we’re encouraged to participate in the forums to seek advice from other authors. We post our rejected songs in the forum, and ask other authors to speculate why it was rejected. It’s all just speculation. Also, we’re all competing for the same business, so I don’t understand the incentive for authors to help each other.

I make a lot of music. A lot of it sucks, and that’s ok with me. I don’t get my ego bruised when that’s the case. But there’s distinctly different reasons why it would suck, and knowing those reasons would help me improve as a musician and increase my chances of getting a track approved. Here’s all I’d like to know when a submission gets rejected:

  1. Was the music commercially appealing? (the beats, melody, arrangement)
  2. Was the production value good enough?
  3. Did I follow all the technical guidelines when submitting the track?

That’s it! Yes or no answers would be fine. If I knew the answers to these questions, then I’d absolutely have a path to improve my submissions and keep trying.

I submitted two tracks that are similar musical quality and genre, with the exact same production quality. I’ve got eight other songs with the same production quality, so obviously knowing if that’s the reason would save me a ton of time and effort. If the production quality on my rejected tracks was acceptable, but the actual beats/melodies suck, then I could try submitting the other tracks. The rejections themselves don’t hurt at all, but it’s the not-knowing-why that is too disheartening.

Making a living with music is my goal and I’m having successes trying all various approaches. Selling music on AudioJungle sounds like it would be really cool. I’m not sure why AudioJungle wouldn’t want to be a bit more helpful on the rejections. If an artist knows why they’re being rejected, they can adjust what is needed. This would mean the quality of the overall submissions would increase and that would be a win/win for the artist and AudioJungle.

A bit of a rant, yes, but I thought I’d try to explain why I can’t continue on this site, and if anyone has some helpful advice (hopefully from actual AudioJungle employees and not just other artists), that would be appreciated.

EDIT: Something crucial that I’ve learned through this conversation that is really going to help me. I thought when something was rejected for not being commercial viable, that meant that it had a problem with either the composition or the production quality. Not knowing which was the problem is what had me hung up. I’m learning here that “not being commercially viable” is more about the composition, as there’s a separate rejection notice if the production quality is bad. This makes a lot of difference. Thanks for all the great responses! This really is a great community here!

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Your frustration is understandable. Rejection without a specific explanation of the reasons is detrimental to the author and his motivation. I am not a member of the Envato team and I don’t know the company’s policy in this direction. But it seems to me that I understand why they do this. Imagine: every day hundreds of new authors with their material come to the market. The level of professionalism is different for all. Envato is not a training platform, this market has no purpose to teach someone to make commercially useful content. But Envato, unlike some other markets, provides an opportunity to see what content is sold best. So you can listen to it, to analize, to learn. Some authors abuse this opportunity and start copying. The reality is that only you are responsible for your learning and development. And a truly worthwhile result is obtained when you are consciously approaching this process.If you give up after only 2 rejections … perhaps being an author on AJ is not what you need? I don’t want to offend anyone, but here on AJ there is a real competition. The authors are mostly positive and sympathetic people, ready to help with advice or recommendation. But if someone is going to leave, there will be a hundred young authors with passion who are ready to receive dozens of rejections before achieving the result. Think about what is really important to you. Victory can be won only by winning battles

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Hello, if you would pay attention to the fact that on the forums are often asked for tell about shortcomings and often help, and the reviewers in turn can not respond in detail for hard rejection for everyone, because this is just unreal . If they answered everyone in the letter and in detail, then our tracks would stand for a check for at least a month or more for half a year. Therefore, I advise you just to ask the forum, whoever you will necessarily tell the problem the probable problem of hard rejection . You need to talk to people and ask, and not blame everyone in the fact that you have not received an answer, this is not the most successful start here, when you start your dialogue with charges :slight_smile:

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Hello,

Regarding your point about what you would like to know in case of rejection, this is already the case. There are two answer types. They tell you whether it is a composition issue or a production issue, or whether they think it’s just not commercially viable, in the first sentences of their reply.

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Yeah just to echo what others have said, it’s really not feasible for reviewers to provide feedback with the sheer volume of submissions the receive. I know it’s frustrating as someone who is in a similar position as you, but I must say that there have been some great people on the forums who have been willing to help point me in the right direction on a few different occasions and I’m sure you’ll get some valuable feedback as well if you post your music here! I’m happy to have a listen.

Cheers!

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Can you see any good reason why a driven musician would stop after two rejections here? It makes sense to me. I made an album of songs, so they all have the same production value. I submitted a song and it got rejected. No idea why. I figure either it’s the music or the production quality. I submit another song. Rejection. No reason why. Granted, while it’s fun to make the actual music, it was a beast for me to try to package these songs technically to the specifications that AudioJungle requires when you submit the various elements of a track. It’s not easy and it’s not quick.

I suppose I could just keep doing that submission process over and over, uploading all the additional songs of the album to see if anything gets accepted. But there’s that daunting feeling that it would be a complete waste of time and effort if my tracks are being rejected because of production value. Time and effort that I could be spending in other avenues of music.

I don’t know the specifics of how many songs are submitted daily, or how many reviewers there are, or what the review process entails. For me, I just need to know a yes or no answer to three questions:

  • Are the beats and melodies commercially viable?
  • Is the production quality commercially viable?
  • Have I submitted everything correctly?

I can’t imagine answering just these questions would be more involved than the current process, but maybe it is. And I don’t mean to come off as complaining. I figured awhile back that I had no way of moving forward here. Perhaps the best approach would be to just step away and explore other avenues of music. Instead, I thought I’d express why I’m stepping away and see if it spurs an interesting discussion. Maybe there’s something I was missing or wasn’t aware of.

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My intention is not to blame anyone. I wanted to explain why I feel I can’t continue on this site, and hopefully spur a conversation.

I’m not suggesting the need for more details in reviews, just a simple yes/no answer to the following three questions:

  • Are the beats and melodies commercially viable?
  • Is the production quality commercially viable?
  • Have I submitted everything correctly?

I feel like the reviewer likely knows the answers to these questions, because they are the fundamental reasons (to my understanding) why any track would be accepted or rejected.

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You might be on to something, and I might be confused. I think the rejection I got was that the music wasn’t commercially available, which made me wonder if it was the composition or the production that wasn’t commercially viable. Are other reasons why a track wouldn’t be commercially viable?

Do you know if there a way on this website for me to see my past submissions and the reasons for rejections?

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I’m not needing feedback, just a yes/no answer to three questions:

  • Are the beats/melodies commercially viable?
  • Is the production quality commercially viable?
  • Did I follow the upload process correctly?

This seems feasible to me. But I admit, I don’t know what the current review process looks like. I can’t imagine it’s less involved than three yes/no questions.

The problem with asking for advice in the forums is that it’s all speculative and it’s not from reviewers. I’ve seen instances where a person posts a rejected track in the forums for advice, and everyone’s a bit confused why it didn’t get accepted. At that point, we’re all just throwing any kind of ideas out there we can.

Another good outcome of letting the author know why it was rejected (even with just three simple questions), is that it should cut back on the number of “bad” tracks being submitted. This allows reviewers more time to review. If my problem is production quality and I don’t know this, and I just keep submitting tracks…this a waste of time for me and the reviewers.

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As I already wrote to you about this you can ask at the forum.

Yes, he does. But as I already pointed out to you earlier that the reviewer can not answer these questions to everyone! They write to you in your letter the main reason for a hard rejection.

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In case of hard rejections, I don’t think there’s any trace other than the rejection email.

If it’s not a production quality issue, there are many factors that could lower the commercial viability. Such as usability, complexity, too much rhythmic/pattern changes, dissonance, is it too experimental?,…

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Thanks for taking the time to reply and engage in this conversation. I know I might sound mad (I’m not), but I really do appreciate it.

The problem with asking for feedback in the forum is that the answers are all speculative between us authors. I’ve seen posts where the rejected track seems like it should’ve been accepted and other authors are unsure why it wasn’t. We just take a guess sometimes. It doesn’t hold much weight.

You’re suggesting that the reviewer doesn’t have time to answer just three yes/no questions. I suspect that replying with just these three answers would be quicker, easier, and more effective than what they are already doing. But I don’t know the process they are already doing. I know I was told in a hard reject that my track wasn’t commercially viable. Either they are talking about the composition, the production quality, or both. Without knowing what they are referring to, I don’t know what I need to improve. It would be a waste of my time and reviewers’ time if I kept sending tracks with sub-par production, thinking that it was the composition that was what was causing the rejections.

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Agreed, but at least it provides a bit of closure/sanity.

There is a definitely a bit of a “lottery” here where even perfectly good tracks just aren’t making the cut, at least if you get a bunch of people saying, this is great, you can get a better idea that it’s not something specific and move on.

There are also lots of people (and I’m not saying you are one) that think they have great stuff but end up getting a bit of a reality check by the more experienced authors on here and to me that is great as well.

We can’t help you or give you an idea where you fit because we haven’t heard your tracks.

Yes/no answers to those questions are basically already what happens, you either get a commercial viability rejection or a production quality rejection as it is. When it boils down to it, yes/no answers to these questions aren’t really all that helpful anyways as we all know it’s usually much more nuanced than that.

Upload process alone won’t be enough for a hard rejection, you just get a “soft reject” with instructions on how to fix the uploaded files so they can accept (happened to me on my first).

As far as a thread stating why you can’t continue here generating some interesting discussion… it’s been beat to death already, you’re hardly the first and you won’t be the last. Post your tracks, let us try and help you out, or carry on!

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Usability, complexity, rhythms, patterns, etc… is all part of composition. I’m suggesting there are only two reasons a track isn’t commercially viable: production quality or composition. Do you know of any other reason? When I get rejection, the reason is because “it’s not commercially viable”. And if I could just find out if they mean production quality, composition, or both…then I can learn and grow as a musician, and as a contributor to AudioJungle. While we authors don’t have an incentive to help each other, AudioJungle does benefit when authors submit more commercially viable tracks. Obviously, they can’t spend much time on any one submission. It makes sense to me to let the author know if the reject is due to production quality or composition. I’m not sure what other feedback needs to be said by the reviewer.

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Thanks for your response, I really appreciate it, especially since I’m sounding all ranty (and I don’t mean to sound this way).

Some of my music (hell, most of it actually) totally sucks and it does not bruise my ego one bit. If the rejection was “dude your music sucks…production value is good though”, that’s all I’d need.

I have posted my rejected songs on the forum and it seemed like a crap shoot of guesses by the other authors as to why it was rejected.

You did touch on something that makes a profound difference to me. My rejections were due to “commercial viability”. I wasn’t sure if this meant composition or production quality. But if you’re saying there’s a separate rejection for “production quality”, then that means my music sucks. And this is good! This would give me at least something to work on and a path forward. It’s confusing because a track’s production quality is a big reason it’s commercially viable or not, right? Now, I’d be foolish to think that a “commercially viable” rejection means that my production quality was up-to-par. Are there rejection notifications to let the author know when both the composition and production quality are sub-par?

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Please look at the statistics for the last day of the approved tracks (not counting hard rejections, music pack, music kit, sounds and logos along with the idents) here Royalty Free Music Tracks from AudioJungle

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According to what you say, several reviewers (which are not as many as you think about not so much on AJ), could you answer each day in detail for each and every one on 414 music tracks(for 1 day)(not considering what I listed above other categories + hard rejections)?

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When they say it’s because of commercial viability, it means it’s not because of production quality. When it’s a production issue they tell you the track doesn’t meet the quality standards (production/mix).

When they tell you they reject your track because of lack of commercial viability it means your track is fine, but it’s just not what they’re looking for.

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I think PurpleFog summed it up nicely above me.

It sucks, I often feel the same was as you, but when you boil it all down… the amount of new authors and tracks that AJ sorts through in the run of a day is mind-boggling… they obviously aren’t hurting for new content so they kinda hold all the cards in that respect. Adding some other rejection options has been often discussed, but that’s never as simple as people make it sound for a number of reasons. It’s often more nuanced than simple answers, it’s re-coding their reviewers back end software, it’s re-training review staff… etc… The forum really is your best hope!

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I agree with you about your indignation(and I support you to some extent) (it’s unpleasant that your track was not accepted and did not explain why), but you also need to take into account market factors. The market is not a training ground, and not your individual mentor.

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Out of curiosity I just searched out your post where you asked for feedback on “Mother Trucker” so I thought I’d just offer a little (perhaps unsolicited!) advice.

There is nothing wrong with the composition or production from a purely “musical” stand point, it’s certainly far from the worst stuff that I’ve seen on this forum!

But, here’s the hard part to explain, it just doesn’t fit in with AJ. So in this case, it’s part production and part composition and it’s damn near impossible for a reviewer to give you an idea what’s wrong with a simple yes/no answer.

There really is a “sound” here, and that piece doesn’t really fit from either stand point. Keep in mind when you’re writing for this marketplace, composition and production are kinda one in the same in that you make production choices (sound selection specifically, mixing decisions) that are ultimately going to effect how you approach the composition, if that makes any sort of sense?