Hi everyone!
Is it still possible to earn a living with AJ nowadays starting from scratch?
I joined AJ in 2016. Had a lot of rejections and learning work before being able to place some tracks.
Then, personal life events stopped me to pursue AJ career (got married, moved from Italy to United States, became a dad, needed quickly a “real job”, no time for making music).
Now that I have some extra time, I was wondering if it is still possible to make a living out of AJ sales. I also live in Seattle, which is one of the most expensive places on planet earth.
Honestly, I’m confused: should I work hard on pursuing a career here, or should I use my time to better learn to code and join a hi-tech well paid job?
IMHO - AJ is not a career and the way things are you probably will not earn enough every month like a “normal” job since the marketplace is too volatile and authors have ruined this place with stupid pricing plus the Elements is icing on the cake. BAH-HUMBUG.
No offense. Get a real job. Or at least keep you day/part-time job. It’s already too late for us old authors, but you’re still young and you still can have a career son! Don’t make the mistakes we made!
Listen up son! Sorry for that, I’m in my mid 30s and also have a weird sense of humor. I’m also a capricorn. To be honest for some seconds:
I’d love to see you guys prosper off of Audiojungle. Seriously. I’m not only upload stuff here, I’ve stopped uploading anything a year ago. I’m single and have no kids, however if I’d have a wife and kid(s) I would do anything to get a steady income to support them. It changes everything, but I guess I don’t have to tell you.
What I’ve learned the hard way is to never rely on anybody else when it comes to your career or your freedom. Especially not sites like Audiojungle or somebody who gives you any financial advise. To me freedom is everything but I on the other hand don’t have to support a family. You have to ask yourself how you can get along. Trust me here:
1.) Ask the right questions,
2.) Think if you want to be employee or the employer,
3.) Sort out the possibilities,
4.) Take action.
You can still write one lousy jingle in a month and have enough time for your family while you work full time. I guess the moment I’ve stopped uploading was when I realized that the majority of customers here just want cheap, PRO and Content-ID free No Name tracks to save money on their projects.
Well here you have it, it’s the truth. Life is hard. People are mean. Do with it what you want. As some wise man on the forums once said:
Well, considering the replies I got so far, maybe 10 years ago it was. I still think it’s possible, but you have to work hard everyday and be a marketing genius, in my opinion.
Is that worth it? The answer is different for everyone.
Well, AJ only is not enough. I really believe stock music markets are a great way to earn money with your work, which is still better than nothing. And maybe, with time, you will see some earning which are more close to the “make a living”.
This is my almost full time job, I’m not living alone so the situation is a bit easier as we are 2 to pay the bills.
But at this time I’m able to earn money with stock music, pay bills, having food and it seems to improve year after year. But my spending are very strict and I can’t allow me lot of things.
If I was alone the situation will be more harder and impossible. So I keep that in mind and I’m aware this is still hard and I’m always ready to change my routine if I have to and if money start to be not enough.
I have no loan, no child, no car, so it’s make this more “”"""“easy”""""", also having some financial help for the rent from the government. My second job is1 or 2 days a week, depending about the season. (As winter is here, no more of this during the next coming month)
And I’m giving some music lesson to beginner too.
It is a way of life that I have chosen and that I take on because this project is one of the most important things for me and because I still can handle it (I have too, I’m too young to give up right now).
As long as I can keep doing it, I do. But I always prepare for the worst !
So to answer, I believe this is still worth it but it’s include lof things to considerate to make it MAYBE real.
For where I live in the U.S., it was always impossible for 99% of us to make a living from a place like this. My monthly rent is about $2,800/month and that’s before I eat or pay utilities, etc. In fact, it’s very difficult to make a living on nothing but production music here in a major city on the east coast.
For those people who just started writing music for libraries a few years ago, note that the pay scale and potential income has DRAMATICALLY decreased since the late 90’s. It started to decline for me around 2007 and I dropped out from composing for libraries a few years ago. It isn’t worth the effort to not be getting paid upfront and give a library or marketplace free inventory while you hope you get licensing shares and performance royalties. There are better ways to make money with music, but either way, I still need to keep my full time job to maintain my lifestyle here.
There may be hope for some people if they are extremely good at writing. A subscription service trend is turning towards contracting composers to provide music on commission. That means up front pay for music where they take the copyright and you keep performance roaylties plus the upfront payment. No licensing fee splits. I say there is hope because this is actually how it used to be years ago when money was much better. These marketplaces and small royalty free sites with non-exclusive agreements for an endless number of content providers have killed the business and there is no where to go but to go backwards. If you’re average, you’re probably going to be left out. That being said, I would really work on composition and not worry so much about output right now. Quality is going to have to be very high to get in. I know of two big subscription services that have already started this and own all of the music rights in exchange for payments on commission.
You can do both. I’m currently working a full time job as a teacher. AudioJungle and other stock libraries are just a way to make additional income for me on a part-time basis. I don’t upload a lot of tracks to AJ because I don’t agree with their review process. The most important thing to remember is to explore and upload your tracks to libraries that are fair and will provide you with a steady income stream whether you produce music full-time or part-time.
Yes indeed !
The place you live has an impact about how you can handle it too. Cost of living are not the same depending the country, city etc. For example, rent is deeply reduced if you go in cities outside Paris ! But lifestyle is almost the same everywhere in all cities in France for example so some people sometime leave and found some cheaper rent with the same quality of life style ! But it start to become a real choice to make, big decision to take etc
So that’s why it’s important to be aware about all these considération and depending on that you will be able to know it it’s possible or not ! Or figure how you can make it a bit more possible before relying stock as a side income or in the worst case, give up on it.
But in any case… having stock as second income is also a great and probably the safiest idea !
I personally know plenty of people who make over $100k per year from library music who haven’t been doing it that long and I myself have made over $10k in some cases for a single license for one track that took me a couple of hours to write. If this is the dramatically decreased scale now, then how much were people earning from library music in the late 90s?
…so you’re saying that IT IS possible to make a living with library music as I understand. Also, what make people like you being successful in living out of stock music against average John like me whose best-seller track sold 13 times?
It’s possible to make a living from stock music, but very, very unlikely. If somehow an author can stand out against the thousands on here, upload 30 high-quality tracks every month and all those tracks get 100+ sales each, then yeah, it would be “possible”. However, the chances of that happening are very low.
All you need is 1 track that everyone wants and needs for their variety of projects. All you need is 1 tracks that sells in huge numbers, and if possible a portfolio that contains a wide range of tracks that again are hugely attractive to a wide audience. You do not need to upload 30 tracks every month. You just need to have a portfolio of music items that everyone wants.
You could try promoting your work but this is no guarantee as your potential buyers will be enticed by the promotion of Elements. AJ will no longer allow you to make a living from selling here - it use to but too many authors have ruined that by dumping prices and flouting the T&C’s so that they cheat thier way through selling.
5 years ago there were a number of authors who made a living from AJ, I doubt that many still do and if they are still doing so you will never know about it.
