For years I’ve been thinking of producing a track which would include a portuguese guitar, and finally last year I’ve ended up producing it specifically for this market, since it lacks this kind of sounds and influences (just try typing “fado” in the search engine).
Today I’ve been told it does not meet the general commercial quality standard and it was hard rejected. I think the reviewers have underestimated the demand for this kind of sound. It baffles me that so many tracks get approved every day but a genuine effort to produce something that sounds different from almost everything else on this market doesn’t even have a chance to prove its worth. I leave the track here for you to listen and tell me why this has no place in this market.
Thank you in advance for all your feedback!
Hey Dockelektro,
Interesting track! I guess one of the reasons for rejection is that in the beginning the guitar loop and the drum beat are slightly out of sync.
Good luck!
Hello Soundset! Thank you for your feedback! If that’s the case, I am confused as to why that can’t be corrected and resubmitted.
Maybe there are other issues with the track that the reviewer noticed, and ultimately decided to hard reject. We can only speculate.
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What Soundset says, something with the sync? Cause otherwise I really couldn’t tell, sounds professional and in demand to me. Maybe fix that and just send again? Without the reversal intro too. Cheers and good luck!
Hello! Thank you so much for your feedback. Hard rejection means I can’t resubmit it again 
I’ve contacted envato about this, I feel this was deeply unfair from the reviewer!
Right, then make a minimum amount remix?
I’ll wait for their feedback, but that is a definite possibility. Thanks!
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Doesn’t anybody have any additional input regarding this track? Anything that sounds off or out of place? Thanks in advance for your help!
I’m very shocked that this was hard rejected. It sounds very clean and professional and has all of the aspects that good background music should have. Normally when people post in the forum about a hard reject there’s a much more prominent and obvious issue. In addition to the sync I would say that the high end of the guitar is up just a little too much and it makes it slightly sharp instead of just bright like I think you’re going for. I would maybe do some very minor EQ and bring it down around 16kHz just a little bit to make the guitar sound a bit more clean and smooth but that’s the only thing I’m hearing and it doesn’t warrant a hard reject in my opinion. I would also maybe mix up the drum beat at some point later in the track. It’s a long enough track and the drumbeat is prominent enough that it gets just a tad repetitive but again, these are minor issues and I don’t know if anyone else hears them. I absolutely would not have hard rejected this track if I was a reviewer.
I have contacted Envato regarding this rejection, I just hope I have a chance of an answer. Thank you so much for your insight, I will take this into account if I get to mix it again.
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I got hard rejected on a track that I was quite proud of a couple of months back. As frustrating as it was, I simply changed the mix (only a little bit) and re-submitted. It got accepted at this second submission. I sometimes think you’re at the discretion of who ever reviews you unfortunately. Some reviewers seem more lenient than others. Your track is awesome by the way. Super unique. I’d suggest doing a 2 to 3 minute edit as sometimes the “commercial quality standard” line is actually to do with the length of a track being too long for marketability purposes. Hope that helps.
I doubt they will respond to your inquiry, unfortunately. They’re very adamant about not giving any feedback on rejected submissions so I would be very surprised if they took the time to answer your message at all, let alone provide any kind of useful feedback. If they did, then that would encourage everyone else who ever got rejected to send an email asking why.
That said your track sounds pretty good to me. Sometimes the instruments blur together a bit and lose clarity but that’s a pretty minor issue… and I agree with you that there are buyers out there that would be interested in this kind of sound. If it were me I would just change it a little, enough to make it considered a “different track” and then re-submit.
Oh so you can reupload it, even if the changes are minimal. This is excellent news. I think I will do just that. I’ve already changed some things in my mix, and I will try to upload it again. Thank you so much for your answer!
Yeah. I also changed the name of the track I re-uploaded because they do say something about not being able to resubmit a track in the hard-rejection email. I thought that maybe having the same name would be an automatic re-rejection. Either way, one reviewer didn’t like my track while another clearly did… So it’s hard to know whether a track will be accepted…
Thank you for your insight! Will do!
According to the help pages:
- You must create a brand new item and ensure it is entirely distinguishable from your rejected item.
So I suppose it’s up to you to determine what “entirely distinguishable” means.
Well…
I had a couple rejections here on AJ… and my most notable one was on my best seller ever (on all platforms). I was about to delete it, it was two years ago and back then I thought the reviewers were some kind of music gods 
I am happy I did not delete it, as this track is by far my best one.
As it seemed to work on other platforms, I re-uploaded it here (with not a single bit changed), and it was accepted, and … is my best seller here as well!
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The idea of the track is very good, and definitely has its place on this market, but I think it needs a couple of things to be fixed:
- The groove is not steady enough, it is really noticeable at the beginning of the track when there are no drums (I know it’s due to the specifics of the genre, but I think AJ want’s the groove to be more steady and clear). Plus, attacks of some instruments come at slightly different times (quantize it more).
- The chopped and reversed intro seems too complicated and unclear.
- It seems too long and a bit repetitive. Although it has rich structure and a lot of useful content, it really lacks edit points, like intros, outros, alternative openings or short endings, pauses, interesting production effects etc…
Overall, you should definitely “remix” this track because the idea is really good and I think can sell really well here. Maybe you could check out some of the bestselling hip hop tracks and copy their structure of the track. Look for interesting intros, outros, automated filter effects etc…
Hope I could help.