Audiojungle prices too low.

Envato Authors AudioJungle
21

I fully agree, but probably many Elements authors will be happy with the decission and the rest will just accept it silently.

You can check a very brief discussion about it here:

There’s also kind of a veil about what could be support reply after this part of Elements license terms:

  • Broadcast use is not allowed. Please contact us if you wish to use the music for Broadcast*.

And there are a few customer forum posts claiming they bought Elements “Full” License.

What’s clear is that whatever we, outsiders, said or think won’t move any needle and that contributors are, and I’m not judging, mostly obedient.

2 Likes
22

Another thing to know if one day you have millions of dollars to recover, whatever the PRO, you do not have the right to sell copyrighted music on a royalty-free platform like ENVATO or P5 (even if you have the right to mark that you are a member of a PRO), it is a question of execution rights, so do not count on the PRO to help you recover lost rights.

23

Ok, now listen very carefully, I shall say this only once:

The current model of AJ is slowly dying, no matter what Envato will do. The online content market is very dynamic. And because it is so dynamic, we were able to start selling on AudioJungle years ago (and many older composers shouted: “what are AJ authors doing? They are selling tracks for $19, that’s ridiculous, this is a price dumping!”). Now again rules have changed and now we are the shouting ones.

I am in one VERY active AJ FB authors group. Do you know what is the hottest topic there in the last few years? Track exposition. Your track needs to get viral with some video content: on TV, on the Youtube (videos and shorts), Tik Tok, FB/IG (especially reels), video game, Spotify etc. If it gets viral, it will generate the following royalties: CID (!!!), internet, performance, mechanical, maybe even additional sync on request. The bigger viral = the bigger royalties.

Many guys from that group (maybe even most of them?) don’t even take care about AJ now. They treat Elements as a great way to distribute their tracks to a wider public (EE earnings are a good bonus). They often make their tracks available for free wherever they can, and they are happy if someone put them on the torrent. Some of them even buy ads to promote the free use. The bigger distribution, the bigger chance for virals. And it works! Sometimes they share how much they get royalties from one source - it is often spectacular.

Impossible? Don’t you all now collect more CID royalties than sync from AJ? In the last year, only one AJ broadcast sale generated me $$$$$ in performance and mechanical PRO royalties. And I’ve heard few guys already saying that PRO royalties from TikTok gave them $$$$$. One guy told me about upper $$$$$ (!!!).

I don’t want this scenario but let’s do a brainstorm: imagine that Envato makes all tracks available for free (including broadcast use). This would generate HUGE royalties, of all kinds. This would also fix the Envato position on the market and slow down AI investors and competitors in their services improvements. I think Envato is aware of that. And they don’t want to do it now. Why? Because giving tracks for free will not be profitable for Envato, right? Right.

This is why we can expect that Envato in the future may become a publisher, taking a share from authors and probably taking control over the CID so they can collect most of the royalties by themselves. There is simply more cash than in sync licensing. This happen on Pond5, Artlist, Epidemic Sound etc. And of course all publishers do the same. I would say more: it didn’t happen because Envato avoids individual politics on each market. They try to rule all of the markets with common simple rules.

Yep, this is scary. I don’t have motivation to take part in that race. I even did not make account non-exclusive (and I do regret it now). And I don’t want to give away my tracks for free. I will simply stay on that ship. Let’s hope Envato will go into a high quality audio content, at least partially, so we will not lose all professionals from the video content and film industry.

Price dumping on AJ? Yep, we can discuss that, but we are missing the big picture.

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3 Likes
24

On my phone, on vacation, but I so agree on all of that. I was on the other side of the fence composing for Cartoon Network when AJ exploded and everyone was nuts… we know the rest of the story and now here we stand. Well put.

1 Like
25

That’s why 5 dollar track remain an interesting strategy when you are looking at the big picture. I saw more opportunities outside AJ while I set low price than at a more regular price. While the debate of price dumping is important to express some frustration, the act of let it go, moving on for those news opportunities is important. Instagram reels things is really something to dig, and those kind of earning are starting to compensate for all those cents sales. We need more flexibility regarding our projects and where we put our energy now, because it’s been too long that we are stick and stuck to the old way of doing. My main issue there is when it comes to promote and to be an instagram musical guys. But would be interesting to learn those stuff.

2 Likes
26

This is not true, Pond 5 never took publishing from the music authors. It was simply a service they provided for those who:

  1. Do not understand how publishing works at PRO’s
  2. Those who would be overwhelmed by the work involved in registering the titles at a PRO.
  3. Those who felt as though opting into the publishing service would give them a competitive advantage.

Only 20% of Pond 5 music authors opted into the publishing service. It also is a neglected service because pond 5 employees are not exactly motivated to hunt for TV Broadcast usages. Pond 5 also only takes a 15 to 20% admin fee for their publishing service. Pond 5 does not really know how to exploit this service, nor do they have the man power to really dig deep into it to maximize earnings. I Know, because I spoke to the former management many many times about their strategy. It is flawed. It is neglected. They do not have time to properly appraoch it to maximize royalty earnings.

Self publishing is hard work, you have to really know what you are doing.If Envato ever were to offer a publishing service: registering titles at PRO’s, registering music at ADREV, or any CID service, hunting down broadcast usages, etc… I would strongly advise every music producer to NOT OPT IN, nor give up your publishing. PUBLISHING IS EVERYTHING in the music vbusiness.

Can I say that again ?..I will… PUBLISHING IS EVERYTHING. OWNING YOUR PUBLISHING RIGHTS AND CONTROLLING YOUR MASTER SOUND RECORDINGS IS THE SMARTEST THING YOU CAN DO.

Once you give your babies (your music) to the vultures and lions who want your publishing rights, you may as well torch your future music royalty earnings into flames of burning dust, black ashes smeared on your face.

Owning and controlling 100% of your intellectual property is the most intelligent and best strategy you can deploy. Do not under estimate the value of your music property. Only a fool gives up control of their music property. I say this from a perspective of 35 years of experience writing for: TV Ads, Movies, TV shows, Internet Media, Corporate videos, Games, etc. etc.

No one will ever take control and obtain any ownership share of my intellectual property, ever. Never ever! You should think the same way if you want to succeed.

4 Likes
27

I did not say it was obligatory everywhere.

I agree but… That’s only for those who know how to handle their distribution. If somebody is lazy, have no knowledge or don’t care - signing a publishing deal is the most ergonomic deal. It’s not as profitable, especially now, when there are so many possibilities to earn cash from music in the internet. At least until AI becomes strong in this field.

Besides that, I agree - keeping all rights is the best you can do.

1 Like
28

@SteelSound if you are in the catalog in a large and real music library for the media like UNIPPM (universal audio library) for example, it is obvious that you are giving up your publishing rights. It’s like that in the entire audiovisual music market, but with music libraries which are not royalty-free.

29

I have the ability to remove my music at all times to make it solely my property. Everyone selling licenses on audio jungle and elements are the sole owners of their intellectual property. Envato is only given the right to exploit our music to sell licenses to their customers for a fee. That fee is either shared subscription revenue, or shared “one off” license revenue from Audio Jungle. We all can remove our property whenever we please from AJ and elements.

Music Producers should work only under those conditions forever with third party publishers, but they will not. They will continue to give away their property, their publishing share of the music composition and sound recording to others for $0. Music producers are not exactly talented buinsess folks. They often are quite dumb and willing to give up their rights to their own property for $0. They do this from a position of overt ignorance. They tolerate these horrible deals from a mindset of “well something is better than nothing” while not realizing what they are really giving up.

It’s not much different than buying a house, but then you give 50% of your “house” to a publisher to rent rooms to their customers for a fee while you earn $0 from the rental effort.

Anyway, I don’t want to talk about this anymore, because I know what I know, I know I am right, but simultaneously, many will disagree with my point of view and continue to give away their “publishing” property for $0. In fact, some music producers give away their writers share of their music property…Now that is really dumb!

Music property always has two owners:

  1. The Writers Share
  2. The publishing Share

Strive to own both, forever.

2 Likes