There’s an awful lot of good material on Audio Jungle that has zero sales. Why didn’t they reject that? I used AJ first as a customer. When I search for something specific and can’t find it, I have to write it. When I do, I upload it to AJ. They reject it. I also acquired my clients because of AJ. They searched, couldn’t find what they needed, so contacted me. When it was done I uploaded the commissioned work to AJ. They reject it. Dudes, you are missing a trick. It makes little odds to me, I’m not in need of a mentor, been doing it long enough. But the point is this: I know there’s a market for the stuff I search for and all I can find is a million ukulele jingles. Meanwhile, web space is dirt cheap and long tail has been around for a very long time. They should get that.
I reckon I might have the record for number of tracks rejected on AJ. When I first started they probably got close to terminating my account with the amount of rubbish I sent. In hindsight it was and is part of the growing process. We need it to be hard on us. It is how we adapt and grow as artists. We might question the amount of feedback we receive, should we get a breakdown of each tracks failings. As a father to 3 young kids there are similarities. Kids are hard emotional work sometimes. As a parent you make mistakes. There isn’t anyone giving you breakdown of mistakes you have made. The only thing you can do is hard self reflection. That is what gets the best results over time.
Very nice information, for me it’s absolutely correct 
There is only one condition to go along with this article.
The author should receive more or less exact cause of on delivery of hard rejections.
For now I do not see any benefit.
Perhaps we need a five-point scale for the estimation of the various components.
For example mixing and mastering poor, average composition, good arrangement.
Great article, yesterday I came across this youtube interview with the AJ staff about rejection, I recommend it
I’ve been an author for 4 years, but only 2 months ago I decided to give royalty free music a serious shot, so I redesigned my profile, composed about 10 tracks, and yesterday submitted my first track, I’m crossing my fingers.
Good article @promosapien 
Thank you for the article! Really motivating! 
I’ve been in the business of writing/producing music for over 20 years. It’s how I make my living. This business has always been one of 100 no’s to 1 yes when it comes to getting music placed or accepted. Quite simply you learn from your mistakes. So, I agree with the op of this article.
But, it’s amazing to me that when you do get a hard reject you get absolutely no feedback from the reviewer as to why they issued you a reject. I really believe that if AudioJungle wants to improve the quality of their catalog then they should tell composers…oops “authors” exactly why their music was not accepted.
I would appreciate it if the reviewer would tell me what I need to change rather than telling me: “After completing our review, we’ve determined that ‘your title here’ isn’t at the quality standard needed to continue forward with the review process on AudioJungle. As the submission is too far off the standards we require, you’ll be unable to re-submit on this occasion. This submission does not meet AudioJungle’s commercial production (samples/recording/mixing/mastering) standard, unfortunately.”
"To understand commercial stock composition, arrangement and production better, please read the following article http://enva.to/6D-sd "
There’s some great information in the article AudioJungle points you to. The problem with the information is that, more often than not, it leaves you as an author guessing as to why you received the reject rather than knowing exactly why. Would it be possible for the reviewer to simply use the article to point out the reason for the rejection…like just coming out and saying “Get to the point quickly” or “tuning issues” or “current samples”?
I believe that if authors received that kind of feedback AudioJungle would benefit from higher quality submissions.
With the number of new tracks AJ reviewers have to deal with on a daily basis there’s simply no time to write a detailed explanation to justify each and every rejection. It would slow the queue down to a snail’s pace.
I do agree however that there should be some kind of system where the reviewer can quickly and easily check a tick box according to the issues with the track. There can be different categories such as composition, mixing, production quality, etc. This would enable those who do experience a rejection to at least get a better idea as to where they need to invest their time and energy to get their skills up to speed.
Yes you are right AurusAudio…I don’t think a detailed explanation to justify each and every rejection would be the way to go here…
I do like your idea of checking the boxes and I would suggest using the following boxes based on the 15 points of production & composition/arrangment as outlined in the article AudioJungle has in the help center:
PonyBoyProductions makes a valid point. The theme of this post (which I wrote) is that having your track rejected should be viewed as guidance rather than a personal slight. But when you receive the form rejection email, there isn’t much to help you know exactly what your track lacked and what you should work on to increase the quality of your submissions, and your odds of getting them accepted.
Obviously, with the number of new tracks AJ reviewers listen to daily, there is no way to provide detailed critiques for each rejection. It wasn’t that long ago that these forums were filled with posts bemoaning month-long review queues. Adding to reviewers’ time spent on rejected tracks isn’t going to reduce queue times. And then there’s the issue of “does Envato staff have any obligation to help authors learn in the first place?” Or is that a function better served by feedback from other authors in the forums?
AurusAudio’s suggestion of a checkbox containing a few common issues like mixing, samples, composition, etc. could allow reviewers to efficiently provide a bit of information without making the review process a lot more cumbersome. Something worth considering, anyway.
I agree with everything said by you! Hopefully AudioJungle consider these words!
This is the most important aspect that AJ has to improve if they want to add diversity and encourage new people to improve, keep learning and posting until good results are achieved. Otherwise, there are those who know (and successfully post and sell) and those who doesn’t (and find it very difficult to improve).
It could be simply a matter of giving more precise feedback related to sounds (samplers, synths, recordings), composition & arrangement, and mixing and mastering. It could be using a star system:
Sounds: ***
Composition & arrangement: *
Mixing & Mastering: ****
Hence, that person knows that she has to improve composition & arrangement more than the other areas.
It happened to me some months ago. It wasn’t “the best” music i did for audiojungle but it was pretty close to my top seller.
Actually, I still have to understand WHY AJ hard rejected it.
Anyway, actually they indeed did me a favour.
I uploaded on another (very different) site and sold it after 15 days (single licence) for an amount that by itself was bigger than my all-time-total on AJ. There was for sure a quite big share of luck in what happened, nonetheless… I got my money, AJ didn’t. Their loss, not mine.
Despite I have less than 5% rejects of my submission, like with any work, there is always human factor and some reviewers do they job great, but someone…
To be honest, I would say that requirements for items quality, I mean generaly mixing/EQ and mastering are not so strict. Yes, a track could be rejected with such a reason, but then the quality of stuff described above might be really poor.
What is actualy strict - mainly arrangement and track structure. You can make +30 seconds intro (like with some of my tracks which are actually accepted 
), and this is already a reason to reject a track. Or - you can go crazy and make epic solo guitar at the end of the track - and again same reason to reject a track. This little big things is up on the reviewer end, and actually the final decision depends from reviewer qualification and subjective things might have a place, unfortunatly.
Anyway, reviwing process for sure not an russian roulette, you just have to work with your tracks at very least at ‘OK’ level, I mean nice EQ/mixing and mastering as well as following general stock track structure and everything will be fine.
I just uploaded my first track, got soft rejected, because I did not split it into different versions, (2:00, :60, :30), submitted again, got soft rejected because I compressed a folder, instead of files, then was on hold for further review. After an agonizing 10 days my first track got approved… I learned a lot in the process.
Now I have a track, I sent another for submission but now I have to find out how to do some marketing in order to make some sales 
any thoughts? thanks
haha 
you perfectly condensed a one hour twenty minutes long webinar video into one picture.
The problem with hard rejection is AJ don’t give any meaningful feedback, all messages are too broad and unspecific. A few years ago they give you personal feedback so you can really understand the problem, now everything is quite subjective…