Does the reviewers really have a CLEAR vision of what music they accept?

I mean, the “Music General Acceptance and Sales Tips” article does help to understand what type of music you are looking for, but there’s gotta be a more elaborate vision that your reviewers are all agreeing on right? A more elaborate guideline of what music is acceptable and what is not.

Sometimes it feels so subjective. Almost like you’ve just hired some guy to review tracks, showed him your “guidelines” and then just let him judge for himself what he likes or not.

For example, my focus in music is on niche genres. About 97% of my sales (~40 sales a month now) is on 80’s inspired synth music. Now when I upload my 80’s stuff it feels like I gotta be lucky to get the right reviewer. My quality is consistent, but sometimes a weeks work of 4 tracks all get rejected all in one go. Other times, all 4 get approved in one go. The past weeks I spent on making authentic 90’s dance music, using samples from the drum machines used in that time, using the JD800 and Korg M1 synth, taping everything to my Revox PR99, mastering with opto-compressor similar to how it was done back then, and finally making sure the structure and composition followed your guidelines and making sure the final product is up to modern standards. All my focus is on making the music suit the purpose of the clients.
All rejected without explanation.
Only 1 90’s track got approved, and it was the only one I didn’t care about making it sound authentic but rather used modern VST’s and digital mastering. This was the one that should have been rejected if any.

After a couple of year of selling now I learned that when I “know” something will sell it does, and when I’m “not sure” it can either get really popular or get no sales at all. When these track I “know” will sell gets rejected, I get sort of bummed out.

All I’m saying is that maybe you can elaborate your guidelines a bit, especially on the technical side. Get clearer so that we can really invest our time in making what we know you really need as opposed to wasting our time hoping you will like it. This will also help us to be creative, give us some space to experiment and improve on the current trends. I think that what might be happening now is that many people keep producing the same damn style and sound just because they know that you will accept this style of music. I mean lets face it, do you REALLY need more corporate inspiring music that sounds exactly the same? Maybe your market actually needs some more rare styled music… This will help you find the new trends as well.

Right now when I go through the most active Audiojungle genres, it sort of feels like going back to 2010. Maybe, just maybe, it would be beneficial for you to look more towards what might become the next trend as opposed to what you know has sold in the past. Don’t get stuck in 2010 Envato!

Also I sort of feel that the reviewers are overlooking these things:

  • Is the music dynamic? Super loud square waveforms does absolutely no good on YouTube’s volume normalization. Dynamic music is professional, competing in loudness is very unprofessional
  • How well does the music suit its purpose, is it enhancing the feeling of the media that it’s made for? 60’s music may sound weird with 2016 styled mastering. (everything doesn’t have to sound sharp and digital!)
  • Is it conflicting with the vocal frequency range? Most of the customers here I am sure wants the ability to talk over the music, maybe add to your guidelines what this frequency range is and how you don’t want it disturbed.

Alright now my rant is done. I’m sure most of you disagree with me since I’m not focused on Corporate or Inspiring, but still I felt I wanted to share my own feelings here a bit.

Edit: Oh and I’d like to add one question. Why do we not get a comment on reason for rejection? I’ve heard it being said that it takes too much time. But really? Just typing “guitar is out of sync”, or “samples sounds outdated”, “claps sounds unnatural”, or “instruments is colliding”, or even “whole composition sounds unprofessional”. If you listen to a track for a couple of minutes, why can’t your reviewers take 2 seconds to write a comment? Or is it perhaps that they don’t know what is wrong?

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I won’t disagree, on the contrary. In any case, no system is perfect, lets hope some new tweaks are in the works :slight_smile:

@_Pengus As a side note about your production habits, you do a hell of a job there! :open_mouth:

I think reviewers don’t use the soft rejection button because they don’t know how to justify else then “I don’t like it”…

I end up giving my music for free :))) and stop submiting to aj

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Thank you man :slight_smile:

Yes I too hope some tweaks are in the works. But I think that tweak would be in the form of coaching, educating and investing in the review crew. Getting the review crew on the same specific vision, result and purpose. They are truly the biggest factor concerning the quality of this marketplace.

Well said!

So do I! Although other market places are more appreciative of your efforts, and aren’t as focused on one particular genre

Well today 5 new tracks got reviewed. The 4 ones that I thought was higher quality was accepted, while the 5th one that I wasn’t 100% sure of is “held for further review”. It feels like the hard work on the 4 accepted ones was worth it, and the last one I can agree might not be as high quality. Good job from this reviewer.

My contribution concerning ambient music. If authors who work in different genres may agree with that, it will be interesting.

The problem is commercial (you may take it as an adjective or noun, it’s a wordplay)

I had read about Envato 2 years ago and uploaded some ambient which I had made earlier. Tracks were approved. When I’d listened to other ambient tracks, I found them various enough.
Last week I came up to new experiments with my synthesizers. Two tracks were rejected. Okay, I checked out what’s on top and found that almost everything in ambient section is now very very Corporate and Inspiring and fits for commercials. Absolute majority of ambient tracks have beat. Who is fond of various ambient music, knows that beat in soundscapes is not very natural, to say the least. I thought about fantasy/sci-fi soundtrack athmosphere, but, compared to a trend, my rejected tracks might be called a post-industrial underground. I will try to compose something much more boring, but still without a beat.

Let us read the comment: Hard rejected, need advice on this
illuminations says: «The issue is really usability for a library like audiojungle. You have to ask yourself where do you hear music like this in commercials, youtube videos, and other media that needs stock music. The answer is not really anywhere. You sound like an artist who’s doing a world fusion/jazz fusion type thing and you have your own sound and that’s really great. For library music though you have to think more usability for a customer.»

Okay, who is the customer?
Is it a guy who wants a music for corporate inspiring commercial?
Of course not! It’s unknown.
And the music of, as our colleague Illuminations says, an artist who have their own sound and that’s really great might be suitable for a film where this unique sound is required.
There is a «Music Broadcast and Film» license available for sale at Audiojungle. Is that only a cheap rhinestone to show how luxury is the Market regarding copyright? More unique sound and methods — more chances to be suitable for interesting projects.

It seems the tendency of Envato marketing is to approve music for commercials, for it is being sold well, and of many authors — to compose this style. And it’s a vicious circle. I am pretty sure that today my tracks which were approved earlier would be rejected as too experimental ones.

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I think I understand what you’re saying, and there is a margin for error here.

We all need to understand that our state of music in the world, especially in the commercial world is changing, and evolving.

I’m taking it your 80s synthwave as you said used musical ideas and sounds from that era, but with modern production techniques. I took a listen to some of those, and they are fantastic. The 90s stuff, I see what you’re saying. It’s a bit more underwhelming, and I think 90s trance can be done a lot better and be much more authentic.

You were already guessing right when you thought your track was potentially not going to be accepted right off the bat.

I wouldn’t think reviewers are not paying attention to trends and ignoring these things. I think that many of them currently still work in the industry, so they too are working on adapting and evolving to keep up with the demands of the current media industry.

Have you found the video of the webinar that they did this year where they talk about rejections and all? I don’t know where it is, but it’s somewhere on here. Pretty useful in my opinion.

Yes exactly, thank you for the compliment on my music!

I agree, and I can see that it’s really hard for the reviewers to understand what each artist were going for when they made the song. For example, when I did those authentic 90’s track my purpose was to make it for ‘authentic’ 90’s media, like if someone was going to do a commercial that actually looks 100% like it comes from 1993 - probably in a comedic way.

Now the reviewer can’t know this, and if he had been listening to super clear and crisp 2016 mastered music and then suddenly my mooshy warm saturated 90’s trance comes in without that crispy clarity, I can see how the first impression might be that it’s just a bad mix/master.

I haven’t seen the webinar, you got a link?

This is pretty basic stuff, I think you may already be aware of these things:

Also, if you’re making submissions for a very niche and specific usage, than it’s usually not generally commercially viable, which is the overall goal here.

I think a lot of us forget sometimes that even the best sounding tracks for something very specific can be extremely well done, but it only has a very specific usage and is not generally viable. Rejections are more than just for quality, composition and production.

Why not make a separate section for intuziasty?
Download there tracks and let the people chooses,like it or not.
If sales during the week no,tracks with zero sales machine are removed.
And the author is analyzing its sales already understands which tracks you need to do!

Well I disagree and I don’t actually think Envato sees it that way either. Look there’s over 400 thousand track in here and a huge amount of customers, so niche music with specific usage areas is exactly what is needed.

Thanks for the Youtube link!