Many of us search the internet/youtube for projects with our music to verify the correctness of the sold license. All we have is usually data from invoice. If company buys license, it’s easy to find videos. But if company hires marketing agency or freelancers who buy license by themselves, it’s very hard to find such projects.
Even optional field “Project Name” would be a great feature. BTW the “Project Name” field is obligatory in Elements (!)
This is why full blown music libraries usually don’t use e-commerce and have the customer describe their projects before granting licenses. There is too much room for a customer to “accidentally” request the wrong license. If your customer isn’t telling you exactly how he plans to use the music before you give him a license, a lot of people will abuse the system and just get a standard license. They might not even check the drop down to see what types are available. Since you’re using e-commerce and shopping carts here as if you’re at Amazon, you could use a series of menus to get the customer to give you all the information you need - type of project, estimated audience size, broadcast or non-broadcast, public venue or not, etc.
Ultimately, the problem is that you’re selling in a digital asset marketplace and not a music library that actually dedicates itself to music licensing and nothing else.
This is the initial problem, yes. But, ultimately, the problem is that Envato deliberately chose to cease communication with their authors, as this thread shows.
I don’t see why a digital asset marketplace would not be able to clarify its terms nor enforce them. This is only due to their lack of willingness, care, dysfunctional management, or sheer incompetence. They don’t like being called out on that, but they have yet to prove otherwise.
Yeah, I think it’s “lack of willingness”. Marketplaces prefer to say that the “sellers” are responsible for policing this sort of problem. Marketplaces are all about volume sales and e-commerce. Libraries are more about higher level licensing and performance royalties because they are also publishers that just about always get 100% of the publishing royalties. For that reason, they are very keen on making sure that broadcast licensing is correctly applied and cue sheets get filed. Marketplaces don’t give a s___ because they’re only going to get the higher upfront fee from a broadcast license, which isn’t common to begin with, and they have no stake in performance royalties since they aren’t publishers.
But, Envato should listen to you guys and could create an automated Q&A that would force customers to describe projects as being one of several common types and determine the necessary variables to more accurately determine which license is to be purchased. I know of one large library with “mega trax” that uses such menus to help calculate which of their multiple rates applies and actually does use an e-commerce shopping cart of non-broadcast scenarios. But, the second you check broadcast use, it takes you right to a direct contact form where you complete an application where you have to register and be vetted to even be eligible to apply for a license. It’s always going to come back to making contact with the customers so you can trust their business and that is something Envato is never going to do because that’s not the “marketplace way”, so to speak. It’s instant gratification with marketplaces. Pay and go away.
Hi @Jimmy_J. I see you are listed as author support, so we are hoping for a little help on who to communicate with in these music broadcast licensing matters, or anyone you think might have the authority to move forward with this. Please tag that person here, invite some of us to a private chat or any other ideas you might have. Thanks!
A short summary of some of the key points in this thread:
The 1 million, 10 million and Film & Music Broadcast licenses needs to be updated regarding confusing texts for customers. Basically Local (1 Million) - Regional (10 Million)- National / International (Film & Broadcast) needs to be included to minimise the confusion. Also we need “No Broadcasting” to be written in bold at the Music Standard License.
Buyers should ideally need to actively choose a license. For example have the license window blank/choose license before you can proceed to cart.
Slightly more “advanced” request are that PRO data, full name and IPI number should be included in the broadcast licenses, as well as “Project Name” field that customers could fill during the invoice data registration.
There are more great ideas in this thread, but these are the simplest and most straightforward ones IMHO.
Why should these suggestions be put to life? Because Envato will earn more money, authors will earn more money and customer experience will be more streamlined and less confusing.
We would be extremely grateful for a little help here. If nothing else just information about who to proceed the further conversation with. Thank you!
EDIT 15th of December:
I´ve exchanged a couple of emails with Author support linking to this forum thread and they will forward our concerns internally.
The Local/Regional/National/International terms are actually listed here already: (but VERY hard for customers to find) https://audiojungle.net/licenses/faq#broadcast-size-a
To whom though? Staff is unresponsive, as you’ve seen.
Yes, this is where I took it from. But the way they are presented there is neither clear nor efficient. They need to be clear from the get go and much more visible.
Support will push this forward to the engagement team, so I´m not sure if there are many new employees getting notified about this, but what do I know. There seems to be several people that needs to be included in this decision and thats why its difficult for 1 person to answer us here I would guess.
I explained them that many of these changes should not require any lengthy and legal considerations (from my view) as they are just about making it easier and clear for everbody including customers. The information for the text update exists already, it is just about making it compressed, simplified and visible for the customers.
I have encouraged them to answer here at the forum and not to my email so we´ll see. Something can clearly be done to improve the situation, so the only unacceptable move is to do absolutely nothing IMHO.
You and I already pinged members of the so called “engagement” team. No one even bothered responding. Having an engagement team that doesn’t know how to engage with authors is pathetic, albeit a tad funny.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that you’ve taken the initiative and try to make things move. It’s just that I’ve lost all faith in Envato.
I completely understand your lack of faith, I guess I have not been active on the forum long enough to feel it that way yet… 
No but seriously I think we have to imagine that the engagement team might have the same problems as we are facing, not getting prioritised when they push further issues to their leaders. It must be a million things on Envato employees to do lists. Though I 100% agree the lack of Envato team members joining in the conversation is very frustrating, unnecessary and non productive.
We´ll see, I really don´t think we should loose our faith in the cases that really matters and can be easily fixed or improved. I think we just have to push forward politely and persistently until we get satisfying answers about whats happening.
It would be great if more authors wants to show support in this topic, money are leaking from every authors bank account here. Just by writing +1 here you can bump the topic and give a “notify” that this issue still needs to be addressed.
Just to comment on my experience with the recent $999 license sold to a firm in Seoul Korea “Music Broadcast and Film” top tiered license. I did e-mail the general e-mail box of the company thanking them for purchasing the license and requested a link to the project on youtube (If they even posted it there). That e-mail was met with silence. They do have a facebook page where content gets posted but it does not seem very “active”. The bottom line is that Samsung and Toyota are two big clients of theirs. My music is most likely going to air and I should be able to collect “performance royalties”. But again, without an email address to the exact person who purchased this top tier license, Progress can not be made.
Envato really ought to consider this requested change. Because the top tier license is sold quite infrequently, the least they can do for us is obtain the complete information about exactly who (the full name of the person and their direct e-mail address) purchased this license so we have a communication channel with the buyer. I do not think this is an out of line request since well…I am the seller. I really believe I have the right to know who really bought this top tiered license. This firm is quite large. They have a picture of an entire building in Seoul on their facebook page with the company logo on it. Seems to easily be a large corporate ad agency with 200 to 400 employees.
Additionally, all the SAMSUNG Korea videos are blocked in USA on youtube so it’s impossible for me to hunt down the spot that way. Toyota Korea is not blocked:
Yep, that’s common problem. We loose a lot of money because of that gentlemen.
Hi @steve_lam Just a friendly reminder about this unresolved case 
I know its been holidays and you all must have a gazillion things on your to do list which needs to be prioritised.
I would strongly consider hiring someone on a project basis to help out with this if Envato does not have the capacity. It would be a super tiny investment compared to all the revenue this will generate in the long run. It remains an undeniable fact that most broadcast licenses are purchased wrongly. And that excludes all the lost broadcast licenses, which Envato naturally have no statistics over.
Anyway, here´s a short summary of some of the simplest suggestions in this thread:
Thank you in advance!
Yep, after some consideration I would emphasize the third point: the need of project info data after purchase of every license, especially the broadcast licenses. Just as it works in Elements. Without this, we are loosing crazy amount of PRO royalties. That’s very important.
Dear inspirational motivational top selling friends @pinkzebra @StockSounds @AurusAudio @LumenMedia @TimMcMorris @soundroll @RedLionProduction @RocketSounds @OlexandrIgnatov @OctoSound @BlueFoxMusic @Sky-Productions @CommercialMusic @Dirtyflint @Stockwaves @MorningLightMusic @PR_MusicProductions @deepersound and everyone else.
As you can see in this thread a discussion about some tweaks to the broadcast licensing system have been going on since October last year. Or actually the discussion have been going on for some years at the forum, anyways you can see a short summary of some of the key points we are negotiating towards in the post above.
These suggestion will make all music producers income increase, if you are registered in a P.R.O or not. How many broadcast licenses do you sell? Are they mostly 1Million licenses? If so, most of them are wrongly purchased. How many lost broadcast licenses do you have? Which TV spots do your tracks end up in? Well those can be though ones to answer.
I do not expect you to answer any of these questions, you can also simply just ignore this post if you really don´t care.
Then again, if you do care about your income for the future, or just think in general that music producers should be paid rightfully for their work broadcasted, and that they should get some basic project info where music is being used etc. Then please just show a little support in this thread by writing +1. If you have thoughts to share please of course do that as well.
Many authors are probably thinking, yeah what´s the point, Envato is not going to listen anyway. Well, what if you are wrong this time? Envato has a gazillion projects going on in their eco system and not a gazillion employees. Things are on a priority list somewhere.
So the point of speaking up is that we as authors demand to be taken seriously, as it is serious money lost for both authors and Envato, every day, every week, every year. Maybe they need to hire someone for this project, maybe not. We´ll see what their response will be, but I certainly think there should be more than 18 authors (current user count in this thread) speaking up for a case as important as this. Every voice counts and will be highly appreciated.
Thanks a lot in advance guys!
+1
+1, but there is Elements with all licenses included as far as I know, where most of the successful AJ authors are participating, so do you really believe someone at Envato will put this thread’s issue on the table?
Thanks for chiming in!
Yes I do think so. Elements was supposed to include some broadcast licenses but that got avoided because many authors spoke up. No broadcast is allowed in Elements licenses.
We have to keep the faith I´m sure Envato will listen to at least some of the points we are suggesting if nothing else.
+1
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