When having a look at the Public Impact report, you can see that Elements has not compensated the demise of AJ it created.
The overall earnings of the author community has dwindled to $111 millions. It was $136 millions in 2018… but wait… does it mean that the whole “Elements is gonna be great for you authors” mantra was just BS? Well the numbers are pretty clear on that.
3 sales this month. I am demotivated. very sad. cry:
Publish a new one or don’t publish it… Do discounts or don’t do it… There are no sales. Motivation is zero. Inspiration too. Everything is sad.
I’ve had around 1 sale per month on AJ in the past year, but February is playing hard to get. Luckily other markets are doing much better, so at least that keeps me motivated to keep making music.
Even now the stock marketplace could be saved but the direction with Elements is clear…
It took just a few years to destroy what an entire community built in a decade.
Now the code marketplace is falling bad…
The new Envato CEO should think of the current strategy because the direction is full Elements and then no Elements because no serious developer or designer/artist… will participate in Elements for a few bucks…
A brief inquiry for the authors: Are your tracks priced at $29 and above still selling?
From my personal experience, number of sales by month, had increase a lot once I decide to sell at low prices. When I was at those kind of price range and even higher, there were some sales, but not enough on the Long run.
Most, if not all of my tracks are priced 29$ or more. They are still selling, but not as many sales as before obviously…
Do you have higher earnings this way or just more sales?
Obviously only more sales here on AJ, but my work is spreading everywhere so I expect some side earning with content ID, Instagram things 
I dumped almost my whole portfolio from $24 to $10 the last couple of months and though the sales increased a bit, it didn’t work as I expected. I’ll be doing the ultimate dump soon.
I’ll also put my tin foil hat and say that I have a hunch they’re are working on a direct-to-Elements upload and forget about the Markets and the whole extended licenses deal. Several times a very foggy Element’s “Full License” has been mentioned in the forums these last couple of months.
I think the market’s shutdown is much closer than we thought.
I think
My only sale of 2024 just got reversed after 41 days. I’m back to no sales in 2024. As if AJ wasn’t depressing enough these days.
If it didn’t work, what makes you think it’ll work if you go even lower?
The price war has no winners, only losers. You’re competing with a platform where tracks are worth mere fractions of a cent. It makes no sense to try to match that.
If the market’s shutdown is close indeed, then what’s the point? I mean why would you want to decrease your share of the last crumbs.
I’m thinking of adjusting for inflation and giving my tracks a ten buck increase, or maybe more. Actually, I’m toying with the idea of making it so that I cross the payout threshold with a single sale. That way, I’m sure to get paid, even if I only make a sale per month. Delusional, you say? sure, but oh well.
Sorry to hear that… that’s infuriating and quite depressing indeed! Were you able to identify the buyer?
Well, I have the information on the invoice, but I’m not sure how far that will get me. Is there any way to contest the reversal ?
No, there is none.
But, if the buyer is not a scammer but a genuine user who did not know how to deal with ContentID for instance, maybe they can be reasoned with. Of course that’s a long shot.
I don’t use ContentID, so that’s definitely not the reason. This is my first reversal ever on AJ. But I do know how reversals work because I’ve had one on a freelance site where I did some Photoshop work worth around $150, which of course went back to the client even though the work was completed. The site contacted me to tell me there’s a problem with the payment and asked me to provide them proof that I had completed the work. I gave them everything I had, including chat discussions with the client, but still ended up losing the dispute. It’s the ugly side of online work for sure, but I guess there’s nothing to be done about it.
You should get on it, sooner than later. Having unprotected music available online is recipe for disaster.
A reversal is happening at the payment gate level. It’s essentially payment fraud. It is not a dispute that the platform can rule upon.
If you don’t use content ID and you have your music on other platforms without a watermark, you can be almost sure that someone will do it for you, at the risk that the customer will not be able to raise the complaint.
I’ve always felt that I don’t sell enough for ContentID to really matter, and my music is always watermarked. These payment fraud situations, however, are a new development for me, so I’ll have to give ContentID more thought it seems.
Well, you are guaranteed $0 if you don’t use it, and no theoretical upper limit if you do use it. So…
The only thing you lose is the time it takes to upload and fill in some metadata.
Of course I can’t promise you any miracles, but you might be shocked how many people use music without permission (or clearing) in big videos. Especially if you haven’t been using Content ID before.
Naturally, more sales means more chances for Content ID income, but they are not necessarily directly related. There can be 1,000 videos per AJ sale. If you spread your music elsewhere without watermarks (YouTube, Spotify etc.) chances will go up.
Right now there’s a channel using my track in every third video or so, with lots of views, and I definitely don’t sell that many licenses. Just keeps going, and I don’t mind.
…and while you’re at it - register with a P.R.O. too!
P.R.O. + Content ID = making money long-term from music.