I am just wondering.
7 out of 11 tracks on the “Featured” desk are one genre. Most of tracks are 80-99% same structure.
Nobody cares. I guess I should definetly switch to PRO to move forward my material.
Sad 
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Hi,
Maybe because that’s what is selling the most. If you look at the top sales, you’ll find out that “corporate” featured items make a real breakthrough in the list. This means that it’s what buyers are after on AJ. Other genres featured don’t sell that well.
I find it frustrating too to be honest. And started to produce that genre to figure out if it makes a difference. After all, you have to give the buyer what he wants… and try to move other material elsewhere to see if it can gain some momentum.
It’s mostly true but also think about what items are on the “popular files” list. I don’t have the sales data to back it up but it sure looks like there’s a snowball effect once a track becomes popular. It seems like many buyers don’t really search for new music, they just go to the popular files page (or top authors page, I wonder).
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Yeah for sure. It seems like the snowball effect is stronger for corporate genre though.
I love the title of this thread! I couldn’t have said it any better if I tried. Too funny…
The PRO issue is a big one for me as well. I joined because I heard there was a possibility they would start allowing PRO registration. But looking at the top seller list issue and the lack of creativity it’s caused, I think I’m going to just go with the custom music deals about to be offered by Envato Studio for music production and composition and forget about this micro-stock stuff. There are plenty of RF libraries dedicated to just music that allow PRO registration and the ability to set your own rates.
Yes, it is. And why?
- There are enormous amounts of corporate videos (low budget) being produced every week.
- They don’t need very specific music (like a cinematic track with hits at 0:14, 1:12 and 1:45), just music that has a nice background feel. Anything will do and they need it fast. That is why corporate tracks can sell 5 times right after approval.
No big/passionate project creator would just go and buy the first track they see. They search, maybe for weeks to find the right track. But those buyers are very few compared to corporate buyers. That’s just the way it is. All kinds of music sell here, you just can’t see it as clearly as the mega-corporate-hits.
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Great post. Now it is clear, at least for me.
action/hybrid guys should definetly switch to PRO libraries.
Well, I think it goes a bit deeper than that, I think it speaks to consumerism/consumption prevalent in the modern world. Everyone is trying to make and sell things cheaply and quickly, turn around and sell things cheaply and quickly again, and make up their profit on volume. Cookie-cutter corporate tracks are the perfect background for this; music doesn’t need to be substantive or engaging on an emotional level, music just sort of serves as a kind of audio cue now - registers in the brain to let someone know this is the kind of thing they might want to by, or else it is making them feel mildly happy for a few seconds, or else it is just filling audio space. Things need to sound formulaic and familiar, otherwise they start to distract from selling a product or idea. Not much wiggle room for creativity, but then when it comes to music, is there ever? Not if you want to get paid. I don’t see this dynamic changing anytime soon.
OK, so corporate it is. However, all corporate videos are not the same so there is no reason to think the music MUST be the same. There isn’t actually a musical genre called “corporate”, it doesn’t exist. There is no need to be cookie cutter and yet so many are composing the same music with little variation. You CAN be creative and provide good music that works for corporate stuff if you are familiar with the various types of videos being produced by potential clients and the multiple production styles that are out there.
Try the following:
Go out and find some “corporate” videos on Youtube, Vimeo, etc. that you can download and create music for. That means all sorts of things because there isn’t just one kind of “corporate video” and I’m sure that many things that are not really “corporate” are being lumped into that category. Intentionally avoid writing what you think is “more of the same” here at AJ. Do this as if you’re scoring the video, watching the dialog and changes in pace, etc. Think of this as if you were being paid good money, not just a split of $19. When that’s done, you may have multiple pieces of music depending on how long the video was. Do at least 5 videos and look at what you wrote. Is that what you would have written by just thinking, “I need a corporate song for AJ”? Probably not. Those were real corporate videos, right? That’s what I think you’re creating music for, not a week top seller chart spot.
You can do this with wedding videos, real estate, company training, sporting events, commercials, etc. If you want to compose music that is useful, but different, then you have to see the full scope of what production companies are doing and create things based on that, not on what your fellow composers are baking in their ovens.
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It does now 
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I personally find this technique one of the worst when it comes to number of sales on AJ. I actually thought I did a good job and had great expactations - but music that I made for selected corporate videos was selling so bad, I had to delete all the tracks so they couldn’t hurt my portfolio any more 
I suggest you go to photodune and try to find a few photos that really suit your new tracks on AJ. This way you will find out how difficult it is to find something you like. You actually find out that searching is so time consuming, there’s no way you could do it for every track you produce. So sooner or later you start going for simple options like limiting yourself to spend max 5 minutes to find something mildly useful in the “top sellers” category.
The trick is you need to make something so good, buyers can’t resist when they taste the first 3 seconds of it. Like when you’re on photodune and you go “how can they make photos like this if it’s so obvious they would be more useful if they were more like this and that…” This is exactly how people search through our music: “Why isn’t this music a little better and more like something I need!!!”
I find it way more useful just to make more music and then only upload the good tracks. So you need to upload only 10 tracks to AJ when you make 100 of them. But which are the best 10? It’s impossible to decide for your own music. So actually you upload all 100 tracks and 10 of them will sell, remove all the others. And repeat.
The greatest thing about being an author on AJ (for me personally) was learning that my music was not all that good as I thought. That’s a great motivation for becoming better. It’s not about the special feeling you incorporate in your music and then expect ofthers to give it a try and feel what you feel. It’s about having an opportunity to enter a market with it’s own rules and seeing how well you can compete with others in it. You might have a hit for itunes that will bring zero sales on AJ and it’s important to say to yourself: “It’s okay this way!”
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I wasn’t talking about writing music for AJ. I was talking about composing music for video, film and television - creativity instead of copying the top seller list - and honing the skills of your craft that relate to its use in media. It was just a suggestion from someone who has worked with music supervisors and media composers directly. You can take it, or leave it.
My point was that certain types of videos will call for certain types of music and that corporate videos are not monolithic. Everything doesn’t have to sound like the generic “AJ corporate song” everyone seems to be copying. If you study these videos and learn how they are structured in general, then look at what is done within each “genre” of video/film in terms of film production, not music, you start to understand how to compose music that will fit each of those types and you aren’t composing something that is specific to the video, but specific to the video genre. If you can focus based on your knowledge of your customer’s craft, you don’t have to compose tons of random music and make your customers beta testers for what works. You will become more efficient so that you can spend more time composing for higher level projects and production music libraries.
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Yeah, I guess it does!
Just rename all your tracks “Corporate” and customers will be happy to buy them 
Sorry, yes, I was talking about writing music for AJ (beginner’s survival guide) and after a few “I’m giving up” and “The system is not fair” type of threads I replied to you, I can’t remember why actually… Yes my reply is a bit irrelevant to your post, I’m sorry for that.
I’m curious, has anyone successfully taken the approach OvationMusic is talking about? I would love to hear your portfolio.
And another one - are there any “corporate” videos you find useful to learn from?
Completely agree:-)
No problem. As for he corporate video review, you can visit YouTube and simply type “corporate video” as a search. The result will give you a bunch of videos that were created by or for companies, some major business, some small. These had the term in their title or in their description. You can also just type the name of any industry and get all sorts of company videos.
I suggest watching the videos from the large and well-known companies, like Apple, AT&T, Maersk, TNT express shipping, etc. But, there are plenty from very small businesses and local services. It’s really endless. I look for longer videos and scan through them. If it looks like a cheaply made video, I move on. If I hear one boring “song” repeated the whole way through, I move to the next video because that’s not going to be helpful either. I look for quality videos where the production company used multiple tracks, a track that has multiple edits, or a track that evolves. Those probably aren’t going to be a video of a person sitting and talking about his company the whole time. They will be videos with various scenes, topics and transitions. There are many such videos out there. The goal is to learn what the better companies are doing and see how you can support that.
Most of what I hear in the better videos is most likely library music, not specifically composed for the video, but edited in a way that gave that feel. There were edits, hits, transitions, etc. - all made from the stock track with what were probably added audio elements during post production. If you see how that is done in post production, then you become aware of how to compose music that will easily allow an editor to tailor your tracks to any video. You can even provide the hits and transitions yourself. Corporate videos can have any type of musical genre in them and at times several of them. It is how you compose them that makes them useful for business videos, not so much what you compose.
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You got me thinking with this one, but I need a few more days to get used to it Music kits would be the perfect answer to this, but they seem to be selling a little too slow in my opinion. This tells a lot about the buyers on AJ, I think it’s exactly like theprestashopthemes put it.
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It’s entirely possible that AJ is mainly intended for buyers who just aren’t that serious about their productions because they’re low budget and low paying. It certainly seems like a lot of people are just buying from the top seller lists and featured tracks without doing much searching if we can judge by the numbers and sales patterns reported by many people in the forums. AJ is pretty much bargain basement material with some of the lowest rates around and I suppose that’s who they attract by design. That’s not me trying to insult anyone, it just sounds like perhaps that was actually the plan from the start. All levels need music and it certainly looks like there are plenty of people willing to support this one to make fast money.
But, AJ isn’t the end of the world. There are many other places to market good music to clients with higher budgets and they use “corporate” music as well. So, the suggestion regarding the study of higher level corporate videos may have some value to someone looking beyond the edge of this website.
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