Hey! Everyone:)
Trying to understand how all the system works around here.
Im not actually new on AJ, though something that I do is not right. Now let me get to the point. I started actually without thinking of a full time job here with making good money. I am a classical guitar player for more than 15 years experience of stage performing and for about last 3 of them Id been trying myself as a composer.
Starting of course with guitar music i had some good pieces of my own and decided to record them. That was actually my beginning with AJ.
So, having fresh records in my pocket i created an account on Envato/AJ and put my records there. Then after a wile I recorded some more music of my own and of Baroque period and again uploaded them. I had some sales but did not actually put any attention to this as it was not regular downloads whatsoever.
Almost a year passed and I decided to make some more contribution to my AJ profile. I bought my own recording equipment (as far as all previous recordings were made by my friend at his own home studio), pretty huge amount of string packs, started to find some material to make records and at the same time building up my composer skills.
So, now after a year of pretty huge impact in my portfolio (and 2 years on AJ over all) i have about 200 items on AJ. Mostly it is guitar music but i also try myself in other directions. Solo guitar is not modern trend and i understood that for sure but still - I am quite confused with the situation of my music here: at this moment I have only 177 sales.
With this situation and everything that i wrote here (damn that is much more than i planned to do) I was wondering - may be You guys could advice me - what should i do next??
1)Deleting most of the material that is not selling good for not to make some bad impression about my portfolio?
2)Think about my music/recording quality?
3)make more trending sound material?
4)Stop making guitar music as it will not make any good money?
5)Create separate accounts: one for guitar music and other for everything else?
6)…could think for some other points but it is not the main goal of this massage:D…
Well…any way - I would really appreciate Your suggestions on this topic.
I thank everyone for watching and reading this pile of pathetic lines;)
P.S. (this are actually my initials:)) ) – Good luck to everyone!
First of all, you are a great player, and I think you should keep going. Here’s what I have to say:
• Your music is very good, really nice for listening, but for classical/baroque sounding music the LICENSING market is limited. It is definitely there but you won’t sell in BIG numbers.
• Get all your music on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Pandora, Apple Music etc. through something like DistroKid if you haven’t already done that. A little YouTube promotion and you could get 100,000 plays per month which adds up to some $$$ (that’s about $400 on Spotify). People like to listen to this type of music and put it in their playlists.
• Absolutely continue doing guitar music! It can sell very well if you make more folk type music. It doesn’t have to be super happy but happy sells. Usually people want to use this type of music in a positive commercial or a vlog with an optimistic feel.
Sad guitar music can sell too, just not in the same numbers.
Add a few more instruments, nothing complicated but an acoustic kick drum playing quarter notes, a shaker/tambourine and maybe piano - that’s it.
• Names like F. Sor Easy Study 6 will never ever show up in a search, so change at least some to something more descriptive - like Classical Guitar.
• You can remove the non-sellers and try your luck at other sites, or simply go non-exclusive. There ARE buyers for this kind of music, just not that many, but they are out there.
• Not that many people can actually record real guitar that sounds good so you’re at an advantage. Use it!
So… just by listening from a few of your tracks, here’s my humble advice. You obviously know how to play classical guitar. Better than most here, I’d guess. Your melodies and arrangements are nice. Your titling and tagging is up to par.
BUT
If I were you I’d take a closer look at the productions. Your sound is very “classical”, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing when you’re doing “classical” music, and for some buyers that may be the right thing. But if you’re looking for a broader audience, I think you should dare to go a little more to the commercial side of things. Try rethinking your whole mix. Don’t think “a listener of classical music would enjoy this”, but rather “this would work in an ad or as background music”. Just my opinion, but you’re a bit heavy on the reverb side, and the guitar is a bit too “authentic” (however weird that may sound). You could go for a more intimate, more compressed sound, maybe try a noise gate to reduce some fret noise, don’t be afraid to boost some lows and highs with EQ or a subtle exciter. Some of your more contemplative stuff would gain from adding a light pad or dreamy background strings. In general I think you need to move out of “performance mode” when thinking about the end product and go more for “effect mode”. You’re probably shaking your head palm-faced when listening to the top sellers on this site with all the sampled guitars with delays and repetitive loops, but that’s the reality here, that’s totally acceptable to many buyers. I’m just saying there’s a lot of space to explore between being “true to your instrument” and delivering a “commercial mix”.
My best advice is to go on YouTube and check out some big ads and videos and try hearing your own music behind the voiceover. There’s nothing wrong with your music, it just needs to be a bit more selling for this market. Don’t be afraid to “sell out”, selling out is what you need to do to get sales 
Quick reflection on your points:
1)Deleting most of the material that is not selling good for not to make some bad impression about my portfolio?
No one cares about your portfolio. Focus on your next upload.
2)Think about my music/recording quality?
Quality is decent, but go for a richer, fuller sound. Mics closer, more compression, less reverb.
3)make more trending sound material?
Trends are everything. Find your favourite trend and master it!
4)Stop making guitar music as it will not make any good money?
Guitars are great. Don’t switch just for the sake of it. Don’t be a beginner when you can be a pro.
5)Create separate accounts: one for guitar music and other for everything else?
No need. If you had 10,000 sales on your guitar account already, then maybe, but as of now, you really have nothing to lose.
6)…could think for some other points but it is not the main goal of this massage:D…
Basically you’re on your way - play to your strengths but fill in the missing blanks!
GOOD LUCK
Agreed. The only thing I would think about doing with your portfolio is maybe changing your logo. IMO, Never remove non-sellers, it might take 5 years but you can eventually get a sale.
This place is all about anticipating the kind of music people are going to want to buy, making that music, and then keywording/titling that music in anticipation of what people are going to search for. Admittedly, with classical guitar there’s probably a limited market. Sometimes I feel a bit stupid making orchestral music - in a lot of respects that’s also a limited market - but acoustic guitar sounds even rougher. With 200 items, you should have like 600-800 sales (3 or 4 sales per track seems to be a reasonable average, unless you get a good seller or two). You are already putting “guitar” into a lot of your titles, so I don’t think there’s much SEO to be done. Maybe try some free promotion on social media/youtube if you haven’t already. Mostly people just want generic sounding music, and if you are going to craft something a bit more complex, people like familiar sounding stuff - music that vaguely echoes popular themes. I stopped writing solo piano music…I could probably be producing 3 or 4 piano pieces a week, and I’m sure I’d feel good about them and like them, but honestly, who is going to buy them?
That’s not to say you can’t do things with classical guitar - every fantasy/RPG game needs some tavern music, for example - but stock music, that’s a pretty hard sell, IMO. With stock music, I’d think about branching out to some other things. Like Flumen said, really bad folk music is pretty popular at the moment; Two alternating chords, a bass drum, some claps, maybe a trumpet, all you really need these days. 
Thanx fo the reply)
Just a couple of questions:
- YouTube promotion - where can i get the info about how to do that (sorry, I`m dumb in this things)?
- You’ve mentioned DistroKid - as far as i know - there is quite a number of such services - maybe You know some of them that work well?
-
Title changing - I tried to do so but had a message from envato team that in my case, if I record some music that is not my own I can only give it an original (mentioning it just in the description is not available also) name
Thanx again for Your time and advices, appreciate Your words on my guitar playing!)
Thank You for Your time and attention to my post!
Your reply made me feel hat I’m not totally lost here and this all was not such a waste of time, but just something to learn from and understand that if You want to raise Your sales - have to be me more of commercial thinking.
Trend idea is a good thing to think of but - from Your reach experience and own point of view - what could be the ones for me considering my portfolio?
Thank You Stockwaves
Thank You adammonroe for taking Your time and giving advice!
Totally understand with “making what you are fond of and can do really well”. Will try to experiment with what I already can do in some way or another)
Thanx again and all the best!))
Some ideas:
Wedding videos - a lot of these are being made now, usually just a series of highlights from the ceremony. Many clients will choose some romantic, beautiful acoustic piece. Be sure to have long versions available. Title it “Wedding”, “Love” or “Romantic”
Medieval fantasy games - Either go dark, like “Diablo” and create ambient atmospheric tracks, or shoot for the “tavern” vibe. If you have a lute, mandolin or some older guitar that will be cool, try to make it sound a bit “down to earth”, nothing too fancy. Game designers usually want looping background tracks, be sure to include that as well.
Folk / pop music - listen too what’s hot on the charts, playlists etc and create something as close to the original as possible. Especially take care to replicate the mix and the sound - use EQ matching if you can. These tracks may end up in travel videos, slideshows, or ads. Title these “folk”, “acoustic”, “travel” etc.
Spanish / latin music - Check out this guy: https://audiojungle.net/user/migueljl - do what he does
Another word of advice, don’t spend too much time adding overlay instruments or creating difficult arrangements. Go for a certain vibe and stay in that vibe. Simpler is better!
Infinitely grateful to You, Stockwaves)))
Many thanx for Your advices, help, most of all Your time and for sharing Your experience! That really means a lot!
GREAT advice! Ecouraging, true and respectful!
- It just means upload the tracks to YouTube with links pointing here and to Spotify etc. Just another place where people may discover your music.
People don’t come to AudioJungle to LISTEN to music, they come to license music for a project. They use YouTube, SoundCloud, Spotify etc. to find music they just want to listen to.
- DistroKid works very well and the music is on iTunes within 24 hours. A few days and it’s on Spotify. DistroKid is especially good if you release lots of singles. The others will drain your bank account. Just compare the pricing and you will see what I mean.
Just don’t do the Content ID registration with them, it’s much better to do it via something like AdRev where you have more control over the claims.
- It makes sense with classical covers.
Hello there, Flumen!
I will certainly listen to Your advices about YouTube and DistroKid.
Thank You so much, again:)
Yes, it can be very nice to have your music on Spotify if it’s the type of music people would sit back and just listen to.
I have a track now that ended up in a viral video with 20,000,000+ views at the moment, and people are asking for the music in the comments. I quickly put it up on Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, Google etc., answered all the comments and it’s now getting lots of plays and downloads thanks to that video.
It doesn’t lead to that many new LICENSING sales because generally people just want it as listening music, BUT, if it continues like this it will bring in almost as much money from Spotify/iTunes as it has on AudioJungle in three years.
It’s all a big machine and you need a bit of luck to get it rolling, but once it does it can really take off.
Nice topic @ActualSound! I am begginer in music production and lots of advises for you here are useful for me too! Thank you and all authors Good luck with sales to all!