Audio is Coming to Elements

elements
#554

Thank you for hearing us, @jamesgiroux

#555

While it’s a positive step in the right direction that broadcast and film licenses are not going to be covered by Elements, we should probably refrain from busting out the party hats just yet.

Unless Elements offers a very limited of selection of soon-to-be ubiquitous generic tracks, it still has the power to do real damage to the market as we’ve known it thus far.

#556

Thanks, @jamesgiroux! This is certainly good news.

However, I’m still in the same boat as @SteelSound here. What I’m concerned the most is about the massive migration of thousands and thousands of costumers who are currently (and willingly) spending over $100 a month or more in standard licenses for a handful of small to medium sized projects that will now move to the subscription model. In my case, Broadcast Licenses represent only a meagre %2 of my monthly income. I’m afraid we’ll still face a quite significant negative impact after the implementation of Elements.

Perhaps setting a mininum subscription period of, let’s say, 6 months, would keep away those who intend to subscribe, download all they can and unsubscribe right away. I don’t know, guess we’ll have to wait and see.

#557

@SteelSound Don´t get me wrong, I agree with what you are saying and I think that we all would wish deep down that this subscription model could go away. BUT do you really think its a train that can be stopped? considering how many authors would join anyway and that Envato clearly wants to compete on this market? Isn´t it better to focus on constructive criticism on the subscription model itself?

#558

Without a doubt, and it’s kind of a huge risk that envato is taking too because they must strongly believe that the existing revenue they do collect from one off sales (one sync license sold) will be made up through more subscribers. I am very skeptical.

Let’s all analyze once again Canada’s Wonderland marketing/ advertising department. They either have an in house producer making these videos in my example above or they have an outside vendor doing this work for them (an independent video producer). That video editor may currently spend $100 a month licensing tunes for these types of videos. This is $1200 a year. Wonderland does not care because this is really not enough money to get overly concerned about this expense.

Subscription models will now allow this video editor to only spend $200 a year. In my example, Envato has a client that once spent $1200 on music, but now will spend $200 unless he or she willingly decides to be charitable. I actually think Promosapien can probably chime in and indicate how much he may spend annually as a video editor under the 1 license at a time model and this would be a real world representation of the damage that is seemingly forthcoming. Promosapien, please do not feel pressured to chime in, but I too once edited video a long time ago and remember how important of a role music plays in driving the mood and creativity of a video, show, or TV spot.

#559

Agree. Also, calling our YouTube customers “teens who got nothing better to do than play around the youtube whole day” isn’t gonna help anybody. This is 2018., and YouTube is now a serious business. Let’s stay united and try to make a long-term sustainable model, both for us and Envato.

#560

As I said, trying to get music producers united to protect our job is like trying to herd stray cats roaming around Rome. For now, we can all just pray that corporate customers want to be charitable and buy the one off sync license. I also am wondering if there even are individual music producers out there who participate in the model and can say “I am making $3000 a month from this model”? It’s clear as day that companies can profit big time in this model, but can the individual writer earn from it?

#561

Hi @SteelSound. I don’t mind offering numbers. I have spent $3,000 to $4,000 a year on stock media, on average, in the last few years. Those totals represent music, SFX, photos, video, and website templates. I’d say that music licensing accounts for the majority of that. Maybe 60%. I buy from other marketplaces, also, but Envato is the primary one.

I have been editing video for a while, and before I discovered AudioJungle, I would purchase blanket licenses from stock music providers that would cost around $4,000 per year. They were comprehensive, well-curated collections of tracks, but broadcast television usage was not permitted as part of the blanket licenses. Additional fees would apply for that.

What I initially liked about AudioJungle was being able to license individual tracks as I needed them, as opposed to paying $4,000 in one payment. I’m not a huge business, and there were years where I wouldn’t edit as many projects, and at the end of the year there wasn’t justification for the $4,000 I had paid.

Also, the AJ Standard License was at a price point that allowed me to license several tracks for smaller projects with smaller budgets like fundraising videos that were only shown at auctions, for example, and perhaps on the client’s website.

I can recall early on, prior to the implementation of the tiered broadcast licenses here, when I would have a TV spot I was working on, and I would look at the Envato license and try to figure out whether I could use an AJ track (at $14 or whatever the price was then) and use it on the TV spot. I remember choosing not to use any of the AJ tracks on TV work because I thought, “this $14 license fee can’t possibly entitle me to use this on a broadcast TV spot.”

That was based on my previous experience with some of the other companies I had worked with.

#562

Thank you for listening.

This is very encouraging to see that Envato is willing to hear our concerns and make some compromises accordingly. This is the kind of thing that makes me want to stick around here.

I still have my reservations and some skepticism toward Elements, mostly in regards to how low the current price is. Although it does seem that maybe a tiered subscription plan is being considered. At the end of the day, It only makes sense that Envato may need to compete with other subscription models.

#563

I am being sarcastic here wavetoys and YES youtube is huge and is in fact the largest TV network there is where the entire world is able to start their own channel, but my point is that there clearly are a ton of corporate customers and small businesses all over the world that are very willing to spend $20 to $100 for a track, but now will be able to get tracks for incredibly cheap.

Thanks Promosapien. I too remember giving a catalog $5000 a year as a blanket license and stopped it for the same reasons you mentioned.

Very interesting too how your conscience would not allow you to go to air with a $14 license.
Maybe there are enough video editors who simply say “I just have to pay this person more money.”

#564

I wish I could say I didn’t use the $14 AJ track on a TV spot because I have a conscience. Rather, I didn’t want to infringe on copyright on behalf of my client, and assumed that I probably would be. Based on my previous experience, I had never seen a situation where paying $14 would entitle you to use a track on a TV spot.

#565

Great news. Thank you!

#567

@promosapien Thanks for sharing your experience as video editor. If Elements would be divided in private and company price options, and lets say would cost 16,50/19 or 29 $ ish for a private user (full Elements package, video, web, music etc) what would you say a reasonable and competitive monthly price for a small to medium company should be?

#568

Great point Mojo! When all is said and done there lies the problem. You have the personal YOUTUBER who needs tracks, but they don’t have budgets for tracks. The entire market seems to be crashing down to cater to that person.

Then you have small businesses with marketing dollars that can EASILY pay our current rates.

Then you have medium sized businesses willing to spend $200 to $500 on a license for a professional corporate project.

Then you have the Massive Billion dollar publicly traded companies that can afford 5K to 10K for a track on a campaign.

The “little guy” video maker running his private youtube channel seems to be driving this market way to far south.

#569

Yeah, I´m still waiting for someone to explain me why the “one size fits all” price is the way to go.

#570

. +1 for all of you who say that subscription model needs to be divided into few tiers. It makes sense for authors and for Envato because like @SteelSound said there are different groups of media creators and each group has their own budget. Adjusting whole subscription model to the group with the lowest budget has no commercial sense.

BTW how would you define private and company use? It’s hard to define, e.g. in my country a lot of low-budget vloggers are self-employees = they have a one person company. Based on a number of employees? I know a lot of big marketing campaigns made by a group of freelancers. In fact they aren’t in one big company or studio, but they are a bunch of freelancers. Base on the number of video editors? I know big commercials made by one video editor. I didn’t check other existing platforms, I suppose they have found some better or worse solutions already.

For me broadcast vs no-broadcast tiers look simple. Of course I would reconsider applying more precised licensing for big online streaming platforms, downloads and physical products = for those who have relatively high budget.

#571

Dividing the subscription model in few tiers could be done by simply have more kinds os subscription plans.

An idea could be plans with limits like this or something similar:

$15,00/month you can download 5 items
$25,00/month you can download 15 items
$50,00/month you have unlimited downloads

Or having plans with credits. The more $ you spend the more credits you got like this:

10$ you get 10 credits
20$ you get 50 credits
30$ you get 200 credits
50$ you get unlimited on elements

With this kind of model each item on elements could cost 1 credit and a cool thing with this model is that if you can’t find the item you need on the limited portfolio in elements you can go to Audiojungle and spend credits there too with slight expensive items like 10 credits or 15 credits each item.

Just an idea.

#572

Hi @MojoSoundtrackMusic. I think it would be a good idea to reach out to more video pros to get their input. It would be interesting and useful to hear from more AJ customers, both big and small. I’m one small company with clients of varying sizes. Some are clients I’ve had for a decade, and others change year to year. I would have to give your question some thought before I could give you a good answer.

I was just asked to fill out a survey from another stock marketplace this week, and some of the questions touched on these same issues related to item costs, and where my pain threshold was, so to speak, when it came to purchasing individual assets as well as a subscription.

Based on my casual observation of companies like Adobe and Microsoft moving their primary software offerings to subscription based services, this is where the industry looks like it is heading. The economics of these programs and their ability to generate recurring revenue and guaranteed repeat business for marketplace companies seems to be driving the trend.

I think the fair solution is a tiered pricing system based on how the assets are used. That is why I thought the addition of the broadcast and film licenses to AudioJungle was a good thing. It provided clarity and priced tracks based on how customers use them.

I would advocate for some kind of tiered subscription system if a subscription model is going to be used to license music. I would hope that some time and effort would be spent on enforcing the rules related to usage. And if an upper tier offering incorporates broadcast usage, participating authors should be provided with some sort of per-download accounting system so they’re able to file their PRO claims. If subscriptions are going to introduce risk to musicians’ businesses, let’s aid them in every way possible in their effort to earn fair compensation for their work.

As a customer, I certainly understand the appeal of being able to license audio and not having to think about how or where I will use it, or filling out cue sheets, etc. as @jamesgiroux mentioned was a goal of Envato’s with respect to simplifying the rules of licensing tracks through Elements.

But if I am a professional customer, I have an obligation to know the ins and outs of properly licensing someone’s work.

That’s my take, for what it’s worth.

#573

I think @RedOctopus has pointed out a very important point / problem in creating a tiered subscription system. Where do you draw the line between private and business users?

If the lower-budget individual YouTube crowd is not being served, I understand the desire to court them. But I think a stock track used by an L.A.-based production company on a project for Netflix shouldn’t be priced the same as a high school kid using the track under an iPhone video of his friend doing a skateboard trick.

At the same time (playing devil’s advocate to my own argument), individually produced YouTube videos featuring goofy pet videos, barbecue recipes, woodworking tutorials, etc. with absolutely zero production value net their creators millions of views and substantial ad revenue all the time, so where do you draw the line between small user and big user?

#574

This is also very important. We, AJ authors, need some common publishing system which should give us a lot of PRO/mechanical/sync royalty cash not only from broadcasts bur also from the youtube and other streaming services. We need a system which will guarantee that cues are properly filled, that CID tracks our music, that PROs track youtube videos with our music, etc.

Every day hundreds (thousands?) of videos are uploaded to the internet and broadcasted in media. Each one usually generates too small amount of cash to track it manually, individually. But all of them generate gigantic amount of money which will never reach us. Times are changing. Last week European Union voted for increasing our rights to receive royalties from youtube, facebook etc. There will be even more money in the future.

This kind of publishing can be really profitable for its creator and it will be standard in the future, especially in the subscription model. Even more - it can be totally automated.