Audio is Coming to Elements

Emphasis on “executed properly”. I think all of our feedback here will help them in their decision making and we have to keep talking this stuff out!

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I love this idea. 5 options may be too many, especially at first, but this is a good start. Heck, maybe Envato could market certain plans based on how/where the client came from. If they arrived via an ad/link on Youtube, present them the “Social Media Package” or something, and so on going up.

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Remove the devaluing bit, and swap the 50% part for around 30 to 64%… and you’ve just described AudioJungle as well. Do you have an issue with AudioJungle as well?

I do. Element is just the concept of Audiojungle pushed to the extreme. The whole concept of Audiojungle, catering for a large and penniless audience, has proved over the years, not to be working for the vast majority of authors. It’s just scraps for most of us. With Elements, the scraps become even much smaller.

That might be true, but you get a lot more of them!

I know that this is the whole selling point. This is certainly true for a handful of top authors.

For the vast majority of us, however, I do not believe this scraps increase will sustainably make up for the loss of revenue from the sync fee model.

While there might be some increase in earnings in the first few months, ultimately the majority of authors will have their earnings crash. Just like many professional music authors have seen their earnings crash when the Audiojungle model took on and prevailed. Only this time the transition will be much faster, and the crash more brutal.

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SSF please tell Collis to come on here and explain how he will make up the revenue that a business like Promosapiens spends. Here are the numbers: His business spends 4K a year on stock everything but mostly music because he’s a video editor. He now will have the option to spend $200 a year and get everything he needs in elements. That is is $3800 in spend lost. It takes 19 new $200 subscribers to make that revenue up.
This seems to be a real world example of what happens in the stock media markets .

Point 2 about voluntary pay cuts: Lets use BP Productions as an example. Here we have an exclusive elite author who has sold 15,000 sync licenses in 5 years. He’s achieved 70% commissions. If he were invited to send the portfolio into elements his commission automatically drops to 50% under the new model. Pay cut number 1 just occurred. The argument is "no he’s dealing his music within a separate “product” called “elements” which creates a 2nd revenue stream. " That is rubbish!

Here is where that concept is dead wrong: A customer hears his track on AJ for $20, likes it, wants to buy it, but then realizes “gee I can just pay the 1 month sub fee over at elements for $16.50 and download this track (Along with a few more too!) cancel my subscription right afterward and save $3.50 in spend…” Pay cut number 2 has occurred. The result is a lower cost to buy his tune and more commissions to share with Envato. The result is less earnings for author. A lot less!

Again, no one is forcing anyone to participate elements. It is a choice. By electing to go in there you are by default lowering your price to $16.50 a track. A true market takes place when a seller sets their price and and a buyer agrees to pay that price. All Music producers should empower themselves to set their price for the creations of their own intellectual property.

Music Producers keep making general statements like…“It just kind of seems like subscription models are where things are headed”…It’s only heading that way because YOU are agreeing to the pay cut and enabling it to go that way. You do not have to participate!

Collis and I aren’t on speaking terms, but it’s been explained before how it can generate additional revenue in addition to marketplace earnings. Sure, you can give extreme examples where it’s bad for the marketplace, or link to articles where some guy ate 20 pizzas at the all you can eat pizza place, but that’s not going to be the norm.

I mean, Envato aren’t stupid… if they were losing $3800 per customer, per year, they would have scrapped Elements a long time ago. It’s working for all the other marketplaces, so there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work for audio. But still, time will tell.

On a side note, it’s $33 if they’re just going to subscribe for one month… so if nothing else, at least that part is 100% better than you thought it was.

A simplistic alternative scenario: Elements (all assets) costs 29$ a month for a private user/self employeed person, 299 $ for a company with more than 1 employees. How would this play out? Would everybody abuse the system or would most clients use it? Would corporate clients bounce back to the market to shop there instead?

For that $33…still… all of BP’s portfolio can be downloaded that month by a single customer. All 348 items (For example). The tracks and audio files can be used perpetually in youtube projects with no consequences. It’s impossible to police the way the music files are used and he’s not getting a copy of the “add license” which gives him knowledge of the end users business name address and contact information.

This sounds like a pay cut to me.

You still have not given a satisfactory response to the Promosapien example. He spends 4K on stock items in a given year, on an as needed basis, through weekly one off license sales. He’ll now be able to get everything he needs for $200. To me that is $3800 of savings for his business. He’s spending $3800 less than he normally would. Just looking at his stock media buying behavior, where will that $3800 be made up?

From other subscribers.

Boy you sure are optimistic! I guess you are a big believer that millions will flock to elements and subscribe! Still smells like massive price dumping campaign to gain market share while simultaneously grabbing 50% of the pie and leaving the customer that has money, larger corporations, and professional post houses with real budgets for production wondering why music just became so incredibly cheap? . It’s still a pay cut SSF.

All this madness to satisfy “Cooking with Sally’s” youtube channel?

It’s insane. And only insane music producers agree to this deal. No one is forcing them to participate. The unit price of Stock Music is getting devalued by 90 to 99% from current levels based on my analysis. But only if you agree to participate in the price dumping.

It’s only a pay cut if you earn less money at the end of the month, and that remains to be seen. You will more than likely earn less money because you’re not going to put your content on Elements, and obviously Elements will impact the marketplace to an extent… but you won’t be benefiting from the additional revenue that it will bring. But I guess that’s your choice.

“Elements will impact the marketplace to an extent.” - That’s an understatement. Promosapien now only needs to spend $200 a year whereas in 2018 or 2017 he spent $4000. That is a MASSIVE IMPACT when you multiply that by thousands of other customers with similar “stock media” spending behavior as he.

Ok, let’s do that. Taking the minimum amount that ‘thousands’ would equate to, and multiply it by $3,800. That’s a loss of $7,600,000 a year. So, taking into account that Envato know exactly how much each customer spends in a year, and how much the average spend is… combined with their historical data on subscriber behaviour when it comes to Elements, the question is: if you’re right, why on earth did they start Elements in the first place? Or at least, why did they keep going with it when they’re losing millions of dollars?

So either Envato are insane and they’re desperate to start losing as much money as possible… or your assumptions are way off the mark. Knowing how often Envato implement changes that are going to lose them money… I’m guessing it’s the latter.

Well you are assuming that when (in my promosapien example) he starts to spend $200 a year instead of $4000 that 19 more customers will sign up for elements to make up for that $3800 drop in his spending behavior. That is a huge assumption to make. Even James said above “the risk to you is the same as the risk to Envato.”

Yours is a huge assumption, mines is a huge assumption… why don’t we wait and see what happens?

Let’s forget about the Elements for a second. What stops promosapien to spend that 200$ completely outside Envato?

The problem here is not suiting the needs of “Cooking with Sally” youtube channel. The problem is competition which offers really outstanding music for 200$. They attract “Cooking with Sally”, people like @promosapien and big corporate clients. Damage is already done outside Envato, and this is what scares me.

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Those companies do not have the 755,000 audio files that exist here. Their offering is limited. Promosapien may not find what he needs. Even if those competitors find more music producers willing to give the model a shot to see what they can earn in a given month two things will happen:

  1. the music producers will not make the money they’d hope for and leave (or just stop contributing new music) and
  2. customers will still need to shop elsewhere because the offering is too limited and the quality sounds inferior. They will not find what they need and then they will have to come to a resource with a larger offering.

Envato has a lot of leverage because they have a massive market share. The competition is price dumping to try and steal some away, but they have a long way to go to build up 755,000 files (and counting)

By the way, all of us need to start talking to or at least try to find music producers engaged in this model as supplier/ contributor to ask how their adventures in subscription models are going. I asked someone yesterday and he said he was earning nothing from the subscription revenue collected, but some back end PRO royalties were starting to show up. Envato does not seem willing to demand cue sheet compliance from subscribers.

They should come over to Elements then… doesn’t sound like a very good subscription model if they don’t get any money.