I'm losing pageviews. What was the benefit of the new Popular Files page design, again?

Thanks for taking the time to leave detailed input. We need to hear from more people like you, Anton.

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Such a great and useful post! Thanx for your feedback, mate!

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Great and interesting feedback! I especially like your mouseover preview audio ideas. Little off topic but I´m curious, do you think themed music playlists could help your workflow? Assuming that these music playlists would be frequently curated and rotated with extra high quality music.

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From my experience of searching tracks on AJ:
I’m trying to find new tracks for promo videos or my projects, but to find something good out top sellers is kinda hell experience. I just don’t have enough patience to listen all those tracks. So I believe Playlist made by Genre / Theme might be very good.

And as for new design - It didn’t take me any difficulties to scroll down top sellers page to listen bottom line tracks

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Hi everyone,

thank you very much for all the nice words and likes regarding my post! :blush:

@MojoSoundtrack

Do you mean a playlist as in a public collection? There are great collections and if they house the theme I am looking for it is really helpful. But the worst thing about collections is that you can’t skip through each track. Only play and pause. And if one track is finished the next doesn’t start automatically. So I end up clicking on each track rush through them and go back. Far from ideal. But it is true, to have professionals making a selection with high quality audio for certain themes is very valuable. Most collections though house mostly or only tracks from that author, which is of course totally understandable. But as a customer I want unbiased (I’m not sure if this is the right word, but you get I mean) suggestions. Not just from one author. If I happen to like a specific author from one track I will dig deeper for his tracks but in the first step I’d like a broader range of tracks. Maybe envato could create real playlists, which can be played as a whole or a self defined number of seconds for each track. But everything should run automatically so I can use my hands to do other things and not clicking all the time. The question is why would somebody suggest tracks from other authors? Maybe envato should create a system that if a track is being bought and was first heard on a playlist the author of that playlist should receive a commission.

Yes, in general playlists are great and would (and sometimes do) help me! :slight_smile:

Yes definitely something along the lines as you describe here. Different authors, different themes of genre or usage or both. Many possibilties, I don´t have the details. Tracks selected/or forwarded by reviewers at AJ but maybe also let authors nominate 1-3 tracks for playlists once in a while and have a healthy mix.

These playlists could also be promoted when Envato is sending out newsletter every month with the free files etc. (if Envato at least make new playlists every month) Attract more new customers with fresh handpicked content.

If you mix that together with your ideas of effortless music browsing (mouse over preview/automatic playlist/radio etc) Most music tracks give you a gut feeling after 4-7 seconds, but to be able to adjust preview time seems very smart. I think Envato could have something really attractive to video producers like you that are above average interested in finding music outside the popular files list. You can´t be the only one…!

I see the mouseover technology is working very well on VideoHive, so it´s a really good idea to start thinking of this regards music tracks as well. #NoMoreManualLabour :slight_smile:

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Hi Anton, We have been begging envato to create curated playlists in every genre for months, if not years, yet they continue to ignore exactly what the buyers want and need: CURATED PLAYLISTS IN EVERY GENRE.
These lists should contain 50 of the best rock tracks, blues tracks, jazz tracks, corporate tracks, cinematic tracks, ambient tracks, edm tracks, indie rock tracks, pop songs, funk tracks, folk tracks, happy jingles, etc. etc.

The 50 curated tracks should live on a list for 1 month, then change to a new 50 in a month or two.

How should the curation take place? Very easy…each month invite 50 authors to send in their best Jazz track or Rock Track or Latin Track or Corporate track, etc…then the next month invite 50 authors to do the same.

This way everyone gets an opportunity to present and showcase what they believe is a track worth listening to.

Buyers win because they are getting curated music, nicely organized in playlists of 50 tunes per genre/ style.
They win because the list evolves and changes each month.

I am astonished that this has not been adopted. Every music licensing site in the world offers curated playlists that are easy to navigate and aesthetically pleasing to the eye.

It does not have to be 50 tunes. 30 tunes would be ideal too.

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Hey @MojoSoundtrack, @SteelSound
thank you for your explanations. Yes the playlists you are describing would definitely be very helpful for customers. Also inviting the Authors to nominate their best tracks is a good way of getting always new songs. I like that! :hugs:

I am sure envato also wants the customers to easily find the tracks they are looking for. I mean they also make money when we customer buy stuff. I guess envato is a big machine with many turning wheels and changes are not easily done. With long running websites like these it’s often the problem that you have old databases which where not meant to do certain tasks. So you start building workarounds and it’s getting more and more complicated. At least this is what I heard from a friend who works for a different long running website and he said even small changes can mean very nasty workarounds and result in problems you couldn’t think of.

So maybe it just takes more time until we get what we need. I don’t know. Let’s cross our fingers they are working on a better user experience. :crossed_fingers:I will not give up hope so easily… :pray:

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I think this is indeed part of the problem. But the response sometimes seems to be to make superficial, but badly thought out changes, such as the look of the popular files page, so as to be seen to be doing something!

But the introduction of curated lists wouldn’t involve any difficult changes to the site but would add real value, and it’s frustrating that no efforts seem to be made in this direction.

The idea about 5 seconds preview is just awesome!!!

Each author knows his music better than anyone and we should be able to download 5 second previews at our discretion. A few main bars of the climax of the track, conveying its main mood.

This would save the authors from the nightmare of starting each track with an action without development, in the fear that customers simply would not listen to the main topic.

On the other hand, buyers could save a lot of time and improve the search results of the desired track.

One additional field when loading each track, called “5 second preview for automatic playback.”
Please Envato! This is the best idea lately.

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It´s a very good point that the current system is old and it must be a real challenge building more modern features on it. Maybe its a bit like a work of art, after a certain time it does not get better, it might be better to start something new. Regardless, there are possibilities to make playlists with the current system.

My impression in general is that AudioJungle really needs additional staff, there is simply to much work that needs to be done and work that are neglected. I mean, we have source files from 2012 on the very front page under: “Check out the newest audio from our community”

Sadly, we are not on priority list.

@PaulGraves
Yes, I would assume too that to add playlists shouldn’t be that much effort. At least to implement. But they would also need to be updated regularly and maybe that is what envato can’t effort right now. I think it could be true that as @MojoSoundtrack sais, that they probably need more staff.

Maybe they are also working on a totally new system, which will be able to feature all kind of cool functions and they simply don’t want to “waste” more time on the old system. But I agree that playlists shouldn’t take that much more time… In general more transparency would be very helpful. To give some reasons why they do or don’t do certain things or just let us know that they are working on it. I’m not a regular forum visitor, especially not on the audiojunge corner. Does envato ever give development updates here?

@serginxs
Yes, that was the idea to listen directly to the main theme/mood of the track and don’t need to skip through it and maybe still miss it. But I haven’t thought about it from the authors perspective. You are totally right, authors probably start “bigger” than the song would regularly need. A lot of Authors probably do fear that customers don’t keep listen up to the main topic of a song. So they start with it, even though it would be better for the song to slowly build. So this feature probably would also mean higher quality of the songs because authors have less fear customers miss the main parts and concentrate on what is best for the song. :hugs:

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Yes this is the biggest frustration, you never really know if you are talking to a wall sometimes, or if things are being considered. So a lot of room for improvements there.

They do, but rarely on the cases we request. I hope it will be better though, there have been more activity the last months than before I think. Hopefully they will get more staff for AudioJungle in the future.

We are allowed to dream :slight_smile:

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As an VH author I can confirm every single word. I searched for suitable track the same way.

But a year ago I started to create special list of favorites AJ authors. Noting absolutely genius people. And people who are the best for me in specific things.
I avoid any popular tracks and any tracks which try to “sound” as popular.
I avoid the search page as much as possible, because it takes too much time to find something there. Prefer to search in my own list. I also search for a track before creating a video preview. This way I can find something especially good and adapt my project to a track if needed.

So my advice for any AJ author would be to focus on reputation, on quality, and avoid popular page as inspiration.

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Thanks for the input, @secondfalseiteration, and for some insight on how a VH author searches for music.

It’s nice to hear your take, because some of AJ’s support docs that offer tips for AJ authors give the opposite advice. In other words, we’re encouraged to look to the popular files page for guidance on the types of tracks we should be producing.

It depends whom you want to be. If you want only money, be a copier. It’s easy, but boring. If you want to be also an artist, avoid popular things, or change them in special, incredible, uniqure manner. It’s hard, but interesting.
Both ways are profitable. But one thing is important always - build your reputation. No one will listen your portfolio, if their first impression was bad. It takes me max 10 seconds to understand I like this author or not. If I hear something bad or even horrible on search page, I will skip other tracks from that author, it helps to save time.

Thanks again. Your feedback is helpful. I spend the majority of my time editing video, and I can relate to what you’re talking about. I have done a lot of AJ searching over the last 10 years, and there have been a lot of times where I found a perfect track for the video I was editing - and the track had only been purchased a few times. I’m often surprised by this, because I think I’ve found something that fits the mood an feel of what I’m cutting perfectly - and I can’t believe somebody else hasn’t found this great track.

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So true. Few months ago I search for something electronic, sci-fi, cyberpunk, dark, maybe a little bit retro. And the majority of tracks were variations of Stranger Things soundtrack. Come on, everybody knows that this show and its soundtrack is great, but it’s not a reason to copy it hundreds times!.. Finally I found a perfect track. Even my wife came to me and ask what I’m listening to.
Today I think that most people buy my item only because I used this track. And this author right now is on top of my list.

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I completely understand.

I came from an audio background before producing video. Now I produce TV commercials, corporate video, fundraising videos, etc.

Audio is so important to how video work is received. I especially enjoy choosing music and doing the final mix. Music choices can make or break a project.

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