Peer Review or Pay for comments upon a rejection.

I have been a part time author here for 3 years, I have not had much success, mainly because I am learning as I go, and don’t get many approvals which impacts exposure. I do learn extremely fast when I have people to show me how to better my work, and/or someone to ask questions to when I have them. It is so frustrating, as most know, to get the hard rejection statement “This submission does not meet our commercial production (samples/recording/mixing/mastering) standard, unfortunately.” To me…being a amateur author this could mean anything, my string sounds are no good, the kick sound is bad, maybe my mix just is too harsh, maybe I missed a click in my audio somewhere, etc…when I first started I would get soft rejections and a quick note on where to EQ or what instrument sound to change, and I would fix it and then get approved. Now its just a hard rejection and no notes. I feel like its a huge waste of everyones time to just be hard rejected…

Idea #1:
I would pay to get reviewer comments to explain a reason for a hard rejection, I feel like I keep making the same mistakes over and over and no one is telling me how to fix it, which results in me working for weeks on a song and then wasting a place in the queue and the reviewers time. I would think it would benefit Envato and reviewers and authors if we paid for comments upon a rejection, or we paid to have them soft reviewed to guarantee or help with an approval.

Idea #2:
We buddy up with authors who don’t have many rejections (AJ must have these stats) and we either have them mentor newer less successful authors at a cost, again I would pay to ensure that my time spent making music is at least approval worthy. I don’t think a of of my songs are that weird, rather they just need some EQ adjustments on the mix/master…or maybe the lead needs to be changed.

I know we can post here and ask people for comments or use the FB page to ask, but not many people say anything, or say anything worth while thats educational as an author. I want to ask someone and fix it without the unnecessary long wait or not knowing when anyone will every get back to me.

I think a lot of us have felt your pain at some point or another. As much as I have not liked getting a rejection in the past, I usually (not always) have noticed something about the rejected track that isn’t top notch sounding or commercially exciting. As a result of that painful process, I think my music ear is getting much better at picking problems out sooner in the process, especially in the mixing and mastering stages.

Regarding your ideas, Envato has audio services provided by some top authors here that you may want to utilize a time or two. Perhaps you can learn from that via a “professionally mixed/mastered” track along with some feedback points provided by the service provider.

That being said…I scanned through your portfolio and, I must say, I heard a lot of great sounding, exciting, and commercially viable tracks. You are doing some good work there. Keep it up :slight_smile:

I’d love to join a thorough feedback group. These forums are nice, but like you said, it’s not the best place to get meaningful feedback.

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Thank you for the reply and nice words @MidnightSnap. I am fine tuning my ear as well, and I am catching more and more as the rejections roll in. I just don’t like the guessing game and I know I would benefit from having a resource to help me with my craft, without the wasted time, or hassle of rejections. It is not easy spending so much time making music, especially when I have a family, full time job, a band that plays live, etc…then to have all that work just tossed out the window and chalk it up to a learning experience is tough. I really just need a professional commercial music tutorial for Logic Pro X in all genres. If anyone has any good links please share!

If a series of authors wanted to create a small feedback group, I’m sure we could set something up… I don’t think it needs to be a paid thing…

Thoughts?

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@matthewcoxy I think that would be great.

As a beginner author I do have similar problem, most of times after being rejected it’s hard to bounce back again. Some feedbacks and encouragements might help