I just made a quick comparison of the item counts in the Music category.
It would seem that PRO music sells better 
Alternately, many authors with lots of sales eventually decided to go PRO.
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I donât understand the chart. It looks like the sales in the non-PRO column are a lot higher than in the PRO column⌠is that right? And Iâm not getting why there are high sales figures for the tracks in the âno salesâ column? And wouldnât you need the actual number of tracks or average sales per track, to draw a meaningful comparison, not just the overall sales figures?
Iâm not knocking your conclusion, Iâm just having trouble drawing the same one with the data provided!
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I think you mean to say that the PRO tunes are better represented in the high sellers than low sellers within the PRO tunes context, but still non PRO sales are higher across the board. But this chart wonât tell you anything about the actual sales force of PRO / non PRO. Sorry. The conclusion you are trying to make might actually be this way around:
When a person gets a big hit, he wants to turn to PRO.
This doesnât mean that if you go PRO you get a big hit 
Statistics are tricky business, especially since correlation doesnât necessarily mean causality.
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Hey and thanks for the numbers, this is an interesting topic!
However, I also arrive at different conclusions based on your numbers:
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The total amount of sales is much higher for non-PRO than for PRO tracks, in fact almost 4 times higher. This can be simply attributed to the much higher number of non-PRO tracks on the market, which is also 4 times higher.
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The sales ratio (sold vs total # of tracks) is pretty much the same for both categories, (0.79 vs 0.81) meaning that both pro and non-Pro sell equally well, or bad.
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The relatively high amount of PRO tracks within the top sellers group could be explained by the fact that, generally, they are produced by more experienced and professional authors who are MUCH more likely to be with a PRO than the average author profile. In fact, you can see the same symptom play out in reversed fashion in the no/low seller groups, where the PRO track to non-PRO track ratio is lowest.
Cheers 
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Just to clarify, these are âitem countsâ not ânumber of salesâ - sorry for the confusion! I only pulled these numbers off the pop-up menu in the search page.
And yes, the TOTAL number of sales could quite possibly be greater for all added non-PRO due to the non-PRO item count being larger, again this is not what the numbers show.
And finally, yes the PRO -> sales causality would be a foregone conclusion, but I never claimed causality 
To recap, the relative distribution of the ITEM COUNT is shifted towards high and top selling for the PRO items.
What does this mean? Well, it should mean that if you randomly select a top seller from the entire Music pool, the statistical probability that it is a PRO track is about 39 %
1 405 / ( 2 222 +1 405 ) â 0.39
This may seem at first like âoh, but then more top sellers are non-PROâ and yes, they are, but since only 20 % of all items are PRO
60 658 / 304 872 â 0.20
âŚthere is an overrepresentation of top sellers within the PRO group. If there wasnât, only 20 % of top sellers would be PRO, right?
So, what we can learn is two-fold: Yes, if youâre a buyer (for whatever reason) wanting to license a top selling track, once you randomly pick one, itâs still more probable that it is a non-PRO item. However, if you (for whatever reason) were strictly wanting to license a PRO track, the probability of it being a top seller is considerably larger than if you (for whatever reason) had unclicked the âInclude PRO Musicâ checkbox.
And given that these distribution groups are separated by nominal numbers (e.g. >77 sales for top sellers) we should now be able to conclude that a PRO track has a greater sales MEDIAN than a non PRO track. Thus, âPRO music sells betterâ - or more correctly âmusic is more likely to have SOLD better if it is now PROâ (still not claiming causality).
Why bother? Well this goes back to my long-standing suggestion that the âInclude PRO Musicâ checkbox should be replaced with something giving buyers more freedom of choice, PRO authors more potential exposure, and quite possibly a higher general level of conversion (due to both top sellers and PRO music already proven to have higher levels of conversion).
If the buyer would be able to select âOnly PRO Musicâ, the search result set would include a higher proportion of top sellers, and we all know that buyers like to buy top sellers. Also, and this is simply my own subjective assumption, PRO music also âsounds betterâ in general, more or less because A) joining a PRO isnât likely the first thing you do as an aspiring stock music producer, and B) most producers gain their skills over time.
So given that Envato wants higher conversion rates, they want high quality music, and they respect copyright laws and the work of royalty collecting organisations, why not make it easier for buyers to find top selling tracks by replacing that demeaning checkbox with a multi-select, or a pop up menu, offering to filter by âPRO Music Onlyâ?
Best case scenario - conversion rates go up and PRO/high quality music gets more exposure.
Worst case scenario - all authors decide to join a PRO, which isnât really a bad scenario.
And no, I'm not saying all PRO music is better stock music, or that if you join a PRO, your 5 yo portfolio turns to gold, but still, these numbers don't lie :sunglasses:
Bottom line - keep raising the bar!
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OK, with âitem countsâ I see where you are coming from. Funnily enough, though based on presumed sales numbers, my conclusion from above still holds true: Generally, a track produced by a PRO author is more likely to be good stuff. Your median higher sales for a PRO track show that, as does the relative skew towards top sellers in the PRO track pool. Good stuff mate
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