It’s been bugging me whether the day of approval really makes a difference to sales, so (with a bit of help from Excel) I produced the following chart for the 50 best selling music items over the past month, excluding any that have been featured. The results were really quite surprising in that there’s no pattern to be seen (for these tracks at any rate). Of course what may still make a difference is the time of day a track is approved but that information isn’t available.
I think you’re right here and I agree. If you’d asked me that question 6 months ago, I’d argue that approval date certainly matters. The older search system was more volatile, meaning in order to get a good start you had to make several sales in the first few days. If you wanted to stand any chance at making the popular files list, you’d need to have an incredible first week in sales to avoid falling back down the search results - such a system didn’t really reflect the more organic growth top selling tracks usually experience.
Nowadays, it’s different - and in a good way. Tracks tend to debut a lot lower than they used to (namely in the common search terms), but they maintain their positions for longer, allowing for a more natural momentum to take place, should a track perform well enough to become a weekly top seller. I’ve come to realise that with the new search indexing, approval date now matters a lot less - which is a great thing.
Now obviously featured tracks and tracks with inflated sales (foul-play by self-purchasing) are outliers that don’t fit the rule, but this concept definitely applies to normal, non-featured popular items. So a solid +1 to your post!
Thanks for posting this! Really interesting to see the results!
I agree with @AurusAudio in that, nowadays, the day of approval seems to have less weight.
For me it doesn’t matter at all. I have no sales for new items for several days (no matter what day they got approved) and then few days after sales starts to come.
Great post Paul! You assessment is very eye opening. Thank you!
Nice topic and great share 
Thanks Paul for the share!
Thanks for sharing
Maybe you’re right. I think this has made me think twice about chasing the corporate/epic/inspirational/ukulele dream sales item. When I’ve wrote in less crowded genres my tracks stay nearer the top of the pile and sold better over time. When I call my tracks Inspire or Happy they quickly disappear as soon as 20 more tracks of the same name have been approved.
I don’t make any diagrams or fancy pictures, but my analysis of views in analytic tab show me that on weekends I have lowest view numbers for brand new tracks.
Excellent summary, @PaulGraves! I think day/time of approval used to matter, when the library was much, much smaller, but with hundreds/thousands of new items being approved each day on AudioJungle (and thus never getting any tangible exposure on the home page or “new items” page any longer), I don’t think day of approval matters at all any more. I don’t know a specific percentage, but I would say that most customers simply rely on search to find what they’re looking for before then diving down into other variables such as sales, rating, author reputation, date of upload, sub-categories etc… Nothing beats actually listening to the music to determine suitability and quality of course. 
That said, there still might be some perceived value in getting an item approved at the beginning of a week or month, as it increases the opportunity and potential to end-up in the Weekly Top Sellers page. i.e. The more days a new item is for sale in any given week, it will have a greater potential impact on popularity should the item start selling multiple times… None of this is a guarantee or a scientific fact of course, just a reasoned hypothesis. It’s exactly the same way musicians release records on a certain day, writers release books on a certain day, and movies are released on a certain day. It’s all built around the day/time/range where data is aggregated for charting purposes.
As an aside, did your analysis include or exclude items already on the Top Sellers page? That may be a variable your research could have potentially overlooked. i.e. If the item was a Top Seller, it would have received extra exposure irrespective of what day the item was approved.
####[ TL;DR ] Make high quality music that customers want, keep creating/uploading on a regular basis, and never obsess about what day or time your item is submitted or approved.
did your analysis include or exclude items already on the Top Sellers page?
That’s a good point - it didn’t exclude them. But only a one or two of the items in my sample would have sold enough over any single single week to have had any chance of making the top sellers page so I don’t think this would have made a significant difference.
I was genuinely surprised not to see a more obvious pattern as it does feel like it should matter when a track is approved. And I will probably still carry on playing the game of trying to time my uploads so they are approved shortly after the weekend, although I nearly always get it wrong But if an item doesn’t sell I shan’t put this down any more to it being approved on Sunday morning or whatever.
hi, i personally do believe that it still matters but that time when items are approved is more and more unpredictable and that this is softening up the importance of approval day despite this is real. I can tell you that , as for me , having a new item approved in the week end is generally simply meaning limited exposure and no sale at all unless the this is approved in the latest approvals of friday nights and that it could gain some exposure out of having no new item validated during the weekend … what u can never be sure of anyway …
I’d typically agree with this, but @AurusAudio not much has really changed in regards to exposure time in the beginning. All of my new tracks have that 40-60 views the first day and then a drastic fall off the next day. It’s always been like this and I think it works well for the most part. I think you might be reaping the benefits from the fact that your tracks are especially awesome and that’s why they’re sticking around for longer lol!
As someone who has been here for almost 3 years, there is one time of approval that seems to be really terrible. Perhaps stats don’t back this up or I am just imagining this, but Friday night into Saturday morning (EST in the US, so Saturday morning into Saturday evening Melbourne time) are totally dead. That initial bump of exposure is completely lost. If the review queue weren’t so backed up I would strongly encourage no approvals at this time because I have never had a track succeed that was approved in this window.
Perhaps stats don’t back this up or I am just imagining this, but Friday night into Saturday morning (EST in the US, so Saturday morning into Saturday evening Melbourne time) are totally dead.
I don’t think this would be incompatible with the numbers I came up with as I am sure that there are specific periods related to the US time zones when a track will get much less exposure because the biggest potential customer base is mostly asleep! But I think these will be as much to do with the time of day as the day itself so wouldn’t necessary show up in something that just looks at which day a track was approved (GMT). But even with shorter review queues it would be hard to second guess when best to upload to avoid this happening!
Yes, tracks still get that initial spike of views (most of mine still have that in their first day), but I was mainly talking about the exposure of tracks over several days and weeks. The previous search algorithm was more volatile, and things (at least from my experience) moved more quickly (ie having regular sales mattered to keep a good position). So yes, an initial spike of views and sales did matter more to an item’s long term performance, but in my opinion, this doesn’t ring true for the current system.
Nowadays, when a track goes live, its initial views (from my experiences) have little effect on its initial position in the search engine. Yes, it would debut a lot lower than it would have in the previous search algorithm and would likely take longer to make its first sale, but when that does happen it slowly moves up; and holds its place longer than it would have with the previous search engine - because sales are weighted more heavily with the current algorithm.
Now I will admit that I’m having some luck at the moment haha, and yes, day of approval does matter (of course a Tuesday approval is favorable over a Saturday approval), but I still hold the belief that it doesn’t matter nearly as much as it used to. I’m not trying to defend the new system here (there are still some things I feel need to be improved - especially regarding exposure of new items), but I do stand by what I said.