HARD REJECTION - please, help me find out why

Hello Guys!

Recently I’ve been getting one hard rejection after another.

This is the latest track that got rejected:

I would be really thankful to anyone who would give me some honest feedback on this track and help me understand why it was rejected.

Thank you!

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I think the Piano Chords and the Strings sound a bit robotic. They should be more smooth and natural. Also the Strings could be brighter, maybe some EQ and Stereo Panning could fix that.

Other than that I dont hear much reasons for rejection in your track, the mix sounds solid, you’ve already got some cool elements in there (especially the Guitar & pluck Melodies, really like those!) and the arrangement seems also good.

Hope this helps you out a bit, good luck :slight_smile:

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hey, great composition you got there really! I would add some reverb to the background strings, they sound a bit too short imo. The guitar chords are too much in the foreground.
There is a crash sound that feels a bit out of place like the one at 1:31

Agreeing with what @Frodonut said as well. Love the pluck and the guitar licks a lot!

Best of luck :wink:

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Hi guys,

thanks a lot for the feedback! Currently, I am working on a similar corporate track so I will try to do some more polishing & detailed finetuning reflecting also your suggestions and will hope it will get through this time. In fact, this rejected track was approved on a different library :man_shrugging: so it didn’t go to waste that much.

Cheers & good luck :wink:

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Hello Friend!!! Don’t be discouraged, 70 of my tracks were seriously rejected, but I won’t give up. Here is some of them.


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It looks like your track is mixed very hot. Have you tried your track in any software like Premiere? It’s off the scale, pushing past 15dbs. Am not sure if this is the issue. Lovely track, look forward to hearing it on Envato.

Hello! Well, 70 rejections is quite a lot… That’s more stock music tracks than I have made so far :slight_smile: I changed my AJ account to non-exclusive after my first 5 tracks were rejected, but keep on trying uploading to AJ anyway… Cheers :slight_smile:

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Well, in comparison to other tracks on AudioJungle the loudness of this track is pretty decent. It was mastered to -11 LUFS. Most tracks here are much louder (even by 4 dB) and very often they are clipping high above 0dB. In this track I made sure it was not clipping above 0dB even after converting to mp3. But you have a good point - to check how the track works in video production software. I think will try that…

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Thank you for answering me, I think to continue working in this direction and hope for success. I wish you success.

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You have too many elements fighting for their place . The mute guitar, the piano and the ostinato strings. Adding new elements during the song is a good thing but not if they are fighting against each other. Try to make them work synergically. 3 rhytmic sequences playing different things in the same time is messing with perception.

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In my previous rejections I figured out that it was probably because the tracks were too simple, so I was trying to add some more elements as the song progresses. It could be that this time there were too many of them. Thank you for your feedback!

Hi ya

Yes I agree with the next comment from Frodonut the piano is a bit robotic …and a bit loud in the mix …
But I too am mystified by how some tracks get accepted and some don’t …
Would love to be a fly on the wall at the listening centre…

I don’t understand why audio Jungle don’t give some sort of clue as to why it doesn’t have to be individually appraised just a choice of 5 of 6 template letters with reasons why …it would really help us writers,and give them what they want, else we are hunting in the dark.

Keep doing what your doing it’s good quality -
as they say pick yourself up dust yourself down and start all over again.

Cheers GizmoGeeks

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Hello! Thanks a lot for your encouraging feedback! I totally agree that it would be much more helpful for the authors if AJ gave some more specific explanation when rejecting tracks instead of the general statement about ‘not meeting the general commercial quality standard’. As there is no explanation from AJ I am thankful for the feedbacks I have received on this forum which gave me some hint about what to avoid or what to improve in my next tracks. Cheers & good luck :wink:

I think you don’t have enough low end in your mix, too much things peaking around 2000-4000 hz masking each other and overall too much gain here. Your muted guitar could peak more in the low mid where are its foundamentals to full the little hole here and let the place for other more agressive instruments in the hi mid. Electric guitar could peak in the hi mid (2000-4000 hz). The strings could peak more just above and sound more open and energic with more treble. You get more space to put other instrus between around 300 and 2000 hz (could be your acoustic guitar. Now you have 3-4 instrus fighting for the same place in the spectrum, nothing really in the low mid and lacking sub energy. I would add or keep more sub on your kick for more low vibration and power. Don’t cut too much low end even on the higher instruments. To me eq is the first thing to improve.

I hope it helps! :slight_smile:

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I feel like the quality is almost there on this one. I think you could use a better piano VST than whichever one you’re using which to me sounds almost completely mono. Stereo piano usually sounds nicer in a track like this.

Those rhythmic syncopated strings hurt the overall track instead of helping it, IMO. They sound too robotic as others have mentioned and just stick out of the mix. Either use a higher quality library for the strings, decrease the velocity so they aren’t so loud, or just take them out entirely.

As far as the overall mix it’s kind of mid heavy but it’s not terrible. That square lead pluck fill that happens occasionally is a bit too loud in the mix I think. Bass could be a bit louder but I’ve heard other tracks on here with similar bass levels that got accepted.

I don’t think your problem is loudness at all actually. You could actually increase the overall volume by a few dB if you wanted. Increase by like 4 dB and put it through a Pro-L and it will be pretty competitive at that volume with other tracks here.

Anyway I think if you replaced the piano with a better sounding piano (LABS soft piano or Alicias Keys for example), removed/improved the strings, and used EQ to cut the mid frequencies where it’s peaking, then boosted the whole thing by 3-4 dB into a limiter, this track would be easily accepted. As it is, it’s pretty close to accepted quality anyway so these are just minor adjustments.

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@AnthonySigouin and @add9audio thanks a lot for your posts! I really appreciate you spent time listening to the track and provided such analytical feedbacks. Cheers :wink:

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