Already taking too long on AudioJungle to accept a song

Envato Authors AudioJungle
1

Long story short, I’ve uploaded a song 22 days ago and it’s still not approved.

I was here when it took 11 days to accept and it seemed a bit long, usually 9 days were enough.

Last week people were talking about 20.5 / 21 days to accept. After only one week
22 days and still waiting…I think we have to draw a line here.

Envato is one of the best emerging multimedia companies that I’ve seen on the net,
but still they lack in 2 aspects :slight_smile

  • contacting them is very hard to reach someone who can forward to the guys in charge the request
    (as if they were hiding or something, it’s really hard to find a way to contact the guys working for them)
  • the delay in accepting stuff on AudioJungle, where you keenly sit and wait day by day, after
    you created a song, managed to pack it up and upload…and you wait…wait some more…hope the limit is x days…
    you find x = x + 1 :slight_smile: then x increments again. This sounds like “we don’t care how many days it takes, people should wait :)”…anyways…
    my real point is that since Envato has a bunch of money because of their success which I appreciate a lot
    they can in an instant hire more people to review for AudioJungle.

I did myself a short calculus in my mind. I’ve noticed that last week there were about 381 audio items (songs, fx, packs) that were accepted in one day. If I were to be hired by them I think my personal quota of checking up new songs would be 40 songs / day, which is roughly some relaxed 8 hours a day for me, as a job doing that.

Now 381 items uploaded yesterday on AudioJungle would mean 9.52, say 10 people that are working on a daily basis to accept or deny songs on AudioJungle.

I’m really puzzled now to why Envato staff would not take into consideration hiring more people to accept their items on AudioJungle. 20 people would mean nothing for them as a payout (+10 people more).

This would totally mean cutting in half the whole 22 days waiting queue to just 11 days. Which would make …umm…how many authors happy ? I think all of them :slight_smile: At least on AJ. At least me :slight_smile:

And then…if they were to hire 10 more :slight_smile: that would result in only waiting 7 days to see your item selling or being checked out by people.

If I look back at what I’ve said, it’s basically nothing. I mean I could definitely live with what we have right now and be happy. Just that usually waiting so much makes you a different person, one that you wouldn’t want to live with :slight_smile:

So yes, all that we can do, because contacting directly someone in charge with a certain situation is kinda not possible the way they posted contact information on the main page, is to hope or pray that someone sometimes can decide there to do something about this. I am aware that there are plenty people in charge with AudioJungle matters at Envato that know how much the current queue is :wink:

Anyways, I wanted to present you all with a current issue that all music authors are facing. No pun intended for noone.
Just to write it down, see what others have to say as if they could change something about it, what they’ll do, oppinions etc.

And if we’re really lucky maybe an admin who knows someone @ AudioJungle crew who check up audio tracks will see this.

By the way, I’m new to this forum, I hope I didn’t write something to upset anyone,
and just wanted to say this. Maybe we can change things together for the good.

P.S. From the web developer point of view, this custom forum, made from scratch I believe by Envato,
is really really nice. :slight_smile:

P.S.2. I like to think that the last 2 years as an author on AudioJungle, compared to the freelance work I’ve done in the last 12 years and other jobs, is by far the best thing that happened in my life, career wise. I’d like to congratulate everyone @ Envato for putting up a great place on the net that can really support audio producers worldwide not to mention coders, graphicians, photographers, basically everybody creating digital multimedia content. Cheers

cheers,
Adrian

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2

I understand your frustration, a lot of people are mad about the review times but there’s not a lot to be done. They already acknowledged they know their queue is long and they’re planning to make it shorter but apart from moving your business elsewhere, I don’t think there’s a solution…

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3

My attitude was more like constructive than just sit and wait.

There’s no point in moving my business elsewhere, that’s not a choice for me,
I’m really happy with Envato. I am an exclusive author. Why would I want to do that ?

Anyways,
people please post your oppinions
maybe we can help change what seems to be unchangeble :))

cheers all

4

I couldn’t see your portfolio from your account but I suppose I’m coming at it from a relatively new author. I can definitely understand the frustration if you’ve built up all the way to elite!

5

Ah, no worriez :slight_smile: My portfolio is up

since my user is xplovibe09, portfolio is @
http://audiojungle.net/user/xplovibe09

:slight_smile:

Nothing to brag upon tho’, I only have 71 AudioJungle items so far, been inactive for 3 years, in the beginning, so not so much sales either.

So no elite for me. Maybe in 10 years or so ? I don’t know. I’m not really thinking of becoming elite anytime soon, just want to create good content for AJ.

cheers

6

I think a combination of the sports competition mixed with a lot of new authors registering has lengthened the reviewing processing at this present time, plus your calculations don’t take into account all the other aspects of the Envato market such as videohive, photodune etc. I agree that there needs to be some changes in how this market operates, including the endless debates about the new search algorithm but the staff have stated that they have listened to our pleas and will look into developing this so patience is the key, I think the review time will shorten a lot over the next couple of months (hopefully).

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7

Well, there’s really a lot of assumptions there, but of course we don’t know anything about Envato’s financials and profit margins, or their labor costs, so we can only speculate. Assuming they actually pay their reviewers something decent (let’s say $20 an hour) hiring 10 more reviewers to work, for example, 50 weeks a year, 5 days a week, for 8 hours a day = 10 * 50 * 5 * 8 * 20 = $400,000. Now obviously $400,000 is a bit more than nothing, and this could be a higher or lower number depending on the hours worked and wage rate. Again, who knows what Envato’s profitability is like, but in most businesses, a $400,000 cost that can be avoided should probably be avoided. If Envato were generating $120 million in revenue annually - and this seems like a good guess to me - the added cost would only equate to an additional 0.3% in labor. However, you have to factor in that Audio Jungle probably isn’t Envato’s biggest or most profitable market, by far they make the most from Theme Forest. So how much revenue does Audio Jungle itself generate? 15 million? 30 million? 40 million? in terms of revenue from Audio Jungle, the extra labor cost could probably be somewhere between 1-3%

Now, can Envato avoid incurring that extra cost? Well, let’s speculate what the financial benefit of hiring 10 extra reviewers would be. Now, bear in mind this is a rough estimate:
$0
10 new reviewers likely nets the company no additional revenue, because, new tracks only increase Envato’s supply, but do nothing to increase demand for that supply. Now, it might not be $0, it could be higher than zero, because we could speculate that authors might get frustrated and leave, and at least some of these authors are taking referral dollars with them. But would so many authors get frustrated by the wait times of the queue that this loss in revenue equates to more than $400,000? That seems highly unlikely. For one, non-exclusive authors like me don’t really care what the queue time is, because we are not depending solely on Audio Jungle to sell our music, or even approve it all. For two, exclusive authors who are highly successful and thus bringing in the bulk of referral dollars are at low fee schedules and thus won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

If Envato were to spend additional money on hiring people, I’d imagine they’d be hiring advertisers, marketers, PR, and sales people, because this could actually generate more revenue for Envato. Remember, Envato isn’t hurting on the supply side, if anything they have an overabundance of supply as evidenced by the fact that they have to hire reviewers to evaluate and reject a high percentage of tracks to begin with.

All that being said, they will probably hire more reviewers when needed. They likely have determined when the correct time to hire more reviewers is. After all, you don’t want to hire 10 extra reviewers and the submission rate goes down, so that you end up with many more people than need, and you have to fire some of your new hires. Likely the long-term trend needs to be going up, because I’m sure something like this is susceptible to short term fluctuations. Also, they seem to be really picky about the reviewers they do hire…it’s usually people from the community who are highly skilled at music production with diverse portfolios. I’m not saying there aren’t 10 people out there like that who would be willing to do it, but it does seem like a process where they wouldn’t just hire 10 people quickly because they needed to. It seems as though they add staff very slowly…

And then of course, someone like me might argue that you could take $400,000, lower the author fees 0.5%, and make everyone slightly happier.

1 Like
8

i get you

so you’re saying it actually is not profitable or even important for Envato to hire 10 more people…
because you calculated their “possible” income already :slight_smile: and the total sum is 400K. Per year.
Now why would someone want to calculate per year when they make already a lot per month.

What I’m saying here, is that I personally don’t believe that Envato cannot aquire 10 people and pay them.

To explain further what I really think, it seems that the situation here looks a lot like when you have a website
that starts small and at some point it needs more and more servers to accomodate it’s users, data etc.

What does the company then ? Well, it buys more servers. Same here. You get more people.
Why ? Well, because the queue increased from 11 days to 22.

Only “company policy” may apply to just say well, we don’t care. You just upload your track
and when it’s checked will be approved. And it certainly is true as well.

What I’m saying is that I don’t really question their decision of having whatever days to process, because
at some point the file will be checked and approved or soft rejected or whatever. I have to have patience.
True.

I was just noticing that at the same time the time of processing increased, and in a regular normal business,
they would do something about it. Say you’re in a supermarket. The people are lining up more and more.
Well, someone calls for 2 more people to shorten the queues. Same here.

And if it was my case, when I don’t have money I don’t get extra chocolate. I just stick to my sandwich.
But their business is booming which is really great for me, you and them,
and they should definitely respect in these terms their authors, because the authors make them have their revenue.

I love Envato and I can wait even 30 days for a track to be processed. No worriez. I can make some more in between.
My point is that noone notices this “queue”, everybody is silent, and I’m the only one that has to blow the whistle.

But I get it, just sit and wait and at some point during the future, tracks will be checked.
:slight_smile:

9

Sure, Envato needs authors, and without authors Envato would have no business, but the problem is that there’s really no shortage of willing authors, especially when it comes to something like music. A lot of people want to make and sell music - it’s an extremely popular hobby. I’ve seen the queue go from 7 to 14 to 8 to 12 back to 7 days, ect. 24 days is a loooonnnnnggggg time. Probably this music kit idea is not helping things - so much work for so few sales. Are they still doing it? I think they’ll end up abandoning that pretty soon.

10

It’s likely that Envato has reached the point where it is now has diminishing returns by hiring more reviewers, and since more and more people keep uploading at an increasing rate that exceeds the reviewers ability to review items, queue times have increased, or put it simply, if the number of reviewers stays constant but the number of authors grows, queue times will surely increase. Unless of course of they inject some stimulant like cocaine into the reviews and make them work 24/7 which wouldn’t solve the problem but only increase the threshold of when queue times start to grow.
The queue time originally seemed to be growing indefinitely as indicative of this divergent phenomena, but, it seems to be stabilizing somewhere in the 20s of days. Some authors leave or slow down the rate they submit or there’s simply fewer authors left who don’t know about AJ at this point as the reservoir of available authors dwindles.
Aside from a lot of authors leaving, the only way around these queue times is if the site increases the weekly revenue enough that it made hiring additional reviewers more profitable. So, if you want more reviewers, bring more customers to AJ.

11

well,
i don’t know.

everybody says that it’s expensive to hire more authors,
and you also say that it’s not a good thing cause anyways more and more authors will join.

maybe Envato will find a way to deal with the long queue.
until then happy producing and quality tunes for all of you

cheers

12

Well authors aren’t really hired here, they’re sellers and not employees. I think you mean reviewers, but then you talk about more authors will join. In the instance of this market place, the top authors make most of the money. But as this turns into a real market place where everyone starts learning what quality it, that’s going to change and make it more competitive. And, if there’s so many authors that they are only earning pennies a month on average, well then there’s no incentive to sell here other than maybe to showcase some stuff for publicity which sites like soundcloud already do. It’s probable that at that point the number of authors would return to equilibrium after many leave after being dissatisfied from earning.

13

i have been active for only 2 years from the total of 5 years with Envato.
And I can tell you that my income (as little author) was substantial
for a newbie, and this year I will probably double my last year profit
because I keep working seriously for Envato as an exclusive autor.

I don’t make thousands of dollars a month like the top authors,
but for me, every dollar counts. ANd since a sale is around 9.50 USD
i’m very happy even when I have a new sale. And this goes on for everyone.

I noticed that as many audio tracks you have as much dollars you will make.
THey only have to be quality and this is also checked by them reviewers.

So I’m really happy with my exclusive portfolio @ Envato.
If you tried to sell on Beatport you’ll notice the difference from earning 25 cents on a track
to 9.50 USD for a track on Envato.You can have portfolios on Beatport, Soundcloud
and Envato. But Envato really sells. And this makes a difference.

In few years from now we all would make more money if we work into
the direction of creativity and quality. And more people will join
and buy. Envato is solid ground, from my perspective, whatever people would say.

happy sales,
me

14

They said it would be down to 7-8 days in June,and they usually do what they say

15

ah really nice man

i was getting used to waiting as well
but good change is always welcomed

cheers
& thanks for letting us know

7-8 days is excellent

16

Right the issue isn’t that Envato isn’t going to make sales, its that if the number of authors will grow substantially bigger while the number of monthly sales remains the sale. You might make $9,50 from a sale, but what if that was the only sale you had over three months? Then you’d only be making 3.16 a month.

17

As I mentioned before, I have seen statistics and created my own statistic analizer and also created few big colorful excel files where I can clearly see how sales grow proportionally with how much work / time I invest in AudioJungle.

Also I have a friend who shared with me his statistics over 7 years. Figures match with mine.

You can only go higher if you invest more time and work into Envato markets, that’s to boost your confidence in yourself.

I myself am totally quitting my part-time job this month to dedicate my time and efforts towards being a better author.

I see your point, but I personally thing that no matter how many new authors join in, if you work consistently
you will see increase in sales.

Of course you have to be careful with each release today, because not only the quality of audio matters, but the way that people find you. So have beautiful and complete descriptions, good search tags, good title and maybe beautify your profile and also add to each item 1-2 images to make your item page look nice.

I will only tell you that for sure, if you will be confident in yourself and invest a little bit more time in AudioJungle author works, your sales will double each year. If you have a ful-time job (5 days a week) that’s not going to happen.
I myself managed with a part-time (3 days a week job) for the past 3 years, and consistent work for AJ, and as a result, my sales this year are about to be double than last year. Focus on quality and the above I told you and you will not fail.

Apparently and certainly, this digital media market is blooming. At least from my calculations.
All I’ve said here is true for me, and it was ment to boost your confidence that you will succeed beyond your expectations.

Please don’t write back a negative attitude response, I already made my mind.

cheers :slight_smile:

18

You mentioned statistics about sales growth, but first of all: for now, it grows “for now,” and second of all that’s not true for everyone which is more of the main point. The only reason you get sales is one: quality and two: marketability, your ability to be distinguished among other items and match what buyers are looking for. As soon as everyone starts making audio that’s as high of quality and doing a little bit of advertising, top authors will be making less sales IF the number of sales doesn’t continue to grow along with the number of authors as already happens in the global graphic design market wherein freelancers compete with others from around the world on global platforms. If you’re making more sales, good for you, whatever you’re doing is ahead of the game.
It’s also not really negative, its objective mathematical modeling and the phenomena it is derived from has already affected other authors which you can see from complaints in the forums for when sales are down, there’s no reason for you to get defensive.

19

I’m not getting defensive.

I’m only working as best as I can and I can see growth in sales on longer periods like years or months.

That’s all.

All I need to do is work, be creative and do good quality music.
The rest is chatting on this forum :))

cheers man

20

I totally agree with SoundLoungeStudio
I think in general we worried too much time on sales and we forget what we like best: making music!
Clearly, this is also a business. But I think that one should give the best of yourself every day, step by step, enjoying what you like, and then the rest will come …
In my case, I try to be positive and think the following: even PinkZebra began with a sale, right?
And after the first or the second and so consecutively.
Have to be consistent and persevering, but always with an attitude of hope and inspiring.
I started in January 2015 and I was hard to find my sound since the first months I suffered declines of many reviewers.
In that first year came 81 sales.
But I never stopped to try to improve and persevere in the best version of myself.
This has resulted in 146 sales so far in 2016 is absolutely choose to "see the glass half full"
And here we go ahead step by step.
Good luck everyone!

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