I’ve always considered an Elite Author to be a leader in some regards. However, I logged into my account to upload a couple of new tracks today and noticed several Elite Authors who were invited to participate in Elements devaluing their work in what appears to be a desperation move to generate sales. Should an Elite Author devalue his or her work on AudioJungle? …… What is your opinion?
No author on AudioJungle should devalue their work regardless of being an Elements contributor or not. Authors who have discounted their work to generate a “sales interest” are not only punishing themselves (look at the sales figures of cheap tracks on the best selling list) to see that the revenue earned from these pitiful sales numbers is bad but screwing everyone else as well. If you want to make a sales (if you are Elite) then earning $0.87 per sale is stupidity personified.
Envato loves this strategy as they promote “Hot under” items and so consequently they draw traffic in and then aggressively steer this traffic to Elements - Nice.
It is the authors who are destroying the market with this cheap pricing since IMHO if your item is not very good then the only course of action is to sell it cheap and then admire your sales figures by posting how well you have done.
I guess if I lived with Mum & Dad, this level of revenue would not matter.
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If even Elite authors have to resort to such low and vile tactics, then this shows how much of a goner this place is. They’re trying to milk any last cent before AJ becomes completely irrelevant.
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Of course musicians should not devalue their tracks, but here are the facts…sorry if this offends all of you: Musicians are the dumbest business people on the planet. They operate their business with paranoia, fear, and stupidity on every level. They accept every deal presented to them under the premise of “If I don’t agree to this sh_t subscription model, someone else will”. The $5 price is a tactic to get rewarded with the “popular files” promotion. Tech company CEOs see dumb musicians as easy prey, people to exploit because they really do know how dumb, and gullible musicians are.
No one forced “elite authors” to participate in the subscription selling model. The top selling 10 to 25 authors here were the leaders and they could have made a massive impact on the future of music licensing had they simply refused to not participate in selling their music through a subscription model.
They accepted a pay cut, and 80% to 90% devaluation of their own assets. They accepted not getting download data from the TECH company. They accept “all you can download” for $16.50 a month while simultaneously selling on market for $20 to $50 a track.
The clients do want their tracks, but they decided to literally just give their music to everyone for $.25 to $2 per download. That is what subscription yields. How can you persuade stupidity to change? You can not and Tech companies know this so they just dangle the carrot, while laughing at dumb musicians.
Look at what’s going on in the world today, prices are going up for everything: Labor, food, beer, gas…but musicians and their tracks? Nah, we just continue to give these venture capital vultures our money and they just laugh at weak handed musicians while stuffing profits in their banks. Musicians are so dumb that they are now singing away 50% of their writers share to folks they don’t even know. It’s done out of paranoia, stupidity, and fear. Envato, if you are listening - go in for the kill would be my advice. You should take 90% of the elements revenue share. No musician would leave that market. They are too paranoid to miss out on the 10% and would just say “it is what it is”. Heck, take 95%…they will all stay put with their tracks and surrender.
Look in the mirror fellas. You have created this monster yourself. No one forced you.
Truck drivers have it right. Containers of goods can not be off loaded onto trucks in LA to be distributed to the stores because well…truck drivers simply are taking a stance that they are not paid enough. They have leverage and they will get a raise.
Not with musicians and music producers. We are stupid, pathetic, cheap…paranoid, worried about a tech CEO getting mad at you and changing the algorithm so you lose your privileged shelf space at the store. That is the toxic atmosphere Envato has created with their manipulative polices. Don’t you all get it?
Yes, Leadership from the top 25 AJ authors is needed, but their actions speak louder than words. Their silence means that their income has remained “as is” so they do not want to rock the boat. I can’t believe subscription has improved their income. The elements folks I have communicated with have all told me that they really have not seen a monthly earnings boost from the model. They just have maintained “pre-elements” monthly earnings. They are too paranoid that their monthly income may fall apart, so they bow to king Envato. That endless negative feedback loop is what causes the subscription toxicity, and $5 prices to perpetuate. Envato knows this, but they do not care because they have the upper hand. Music from elements is getting used in broadcast all the time - Envato does not care. The top 25 authors do not care either . Musicians are just dumb, foolish, easy prey to take advantage of. Envato knows that they have to keep paying these guys the same that they always earned. It’s only when these guys see their income starting to fade that things may change.
We’ll see if it happens. For now, the “elite” elements authors don’t have anything to fix just yet. They are not complaining because their monthly income has remained the same.
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Here is the toothy faced punk that made $4 Billion of the backs of Artists asking for the “lowest royalty rate” in history for songwriters. Take notes ENVATO, go in for the kill. You have a bunch of gullible music producers herded up and enslaved already. Just grab the entire pie for your executive management team. Who will stand in your way?
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i did not support this, but man, this is plan and reasons for such behavior. It is 100% dustructive process for all market and industry as well, and i surprised how Envato did not react on this. But this guys trying to grab first lines of search request. You loose money, but earn visits and later interest to portofolio. Later some of them correct this prices to higher levels. So it’s wild market. Too much supply with drying customer base.
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Leon…You should lower your hit corporate track to $5 to regain the top spot. That will drive customers to your portfolio. While it will make you want to vomit earning .82 cents a sale or whatever it is (while envato makes $4 I believe) you might be better off with that strategy. It’s so obvious that all the $5 popular files use those tracks as “loss leaders” just to get the consistent popular files / front page promotion. Frankly I am surprised the other top selling authors don’t use that strategy.
Envato loves this $5 behavior because they don’t care…they make $4 “seller fees” and $4 “Buyer Fees” from these transactions. PURE EVIL, They earn $8 while the author earns .82 cents or whatever it is. My God, does any musician in this world have any pride anymore???
It’s Predatory behavior the way Envato structured the business model and they just give the finger to musicians every day.
It’s such a joke, an author sells 50 units but earns only $40??? Then they get all the promotional glory on the front page of the site . It’s so Pathetic, pure evil.
The rest of us with integrity make $20 or $30 from one standard license sale…
“It is what it is”
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I don’t need to do it. It is my “bread and butter” track, still selling good. What those dumpers do not understand - there is limited number of customers who need certain type of music. I tried to experiment with pricing of this track and believe me - it’s all the same. Proportion between price and sales connected but in funny way. If i drop price by 30% i got 15-20% more sales or exactly the same as it was before discount. So i don’t need to set it low.
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Do not agree with all your thoughts, this is not Evil Envato, this is partially a reality of today’s life. You can produce good track with laptop and good set of cheap speakers practically without knowledge of music theory. It was not possible 30 years ago. So it’s balance of demand and supply.
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"You can produce good track with laptop and good set of cheap speakers practically without knowledge of music theory. It was not possible 30 years ago. So it’s balance of demand and supply.’
I personally have never been able to create a track with a lap top that went on and really sold well. I just do not work that way. KONTAKT drum sounds officially suck by the way. I just can not listen to them anymore. It’s such a "has been’ sound. Everyone using that same cheap “abbey Road” drums crap. People need to to find a real drummer to play on the track.
Even if you can make a great track on an iphone in 15 minutes it does not mean it’s worth $5. Clients are smarter than we may think and they will gravitate toward a track with a “real vibe” and pay up for it.
I recently licensed a tune to COMCAST for $15,000 for their marketing campaign. Then we have a bunch of bums here selling for $5 or $16.50 a month. What a joke! Shameful! Sad!
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You don’t have to sell well. Just the fact that you can create a track on a laptop has gotta make you realise that every man and his dog is a music producer these days. I just saw an ad aimed at YouTubers for a “music creation service” who’s premise was ‘choose a beat, literally record your dog barking, add some reverb and turn it into a track… on your phone’. Then there’s AI produced music, which is totally usable for the millions of creators of the kind of disposable video entertainment that Audio Jungle is mostly serving. Envato is being bypassed completely, so in the grand scheme of things, subscription prices are just the start of our worries here.
You’re blaming and berating musicians for being bad at business, which to be fair, might well be a fairly accurate stereotype - I think throughout the history of music, musicians have been shafted by people who wear ties and write long legal documents. - But self sabotage and ignorance aren’t the driving factors in these kind of price dumps by any stretch. Musicians, especially those in the sync game, are just next on the list to have their vocation largely automated, unfortunately. We are all trying to navigate these industry changes as best as we can. Blaming everyone else isn’t going to help much.
Audio Jungle might well be dead. They don’t seem interested in updating their decade old platform and staying competitive. That’s on them. They focus on the many small fry and so encourage lower prices. Trouble is, they don’t differentiate who can use their music for these silly low prices, so we all suffer. Only they can change this. They pull strings and the masses fall into position.
Those who are talented, professional musicians might have to accept that this is no longer a place where you can exclusify your business. This isn’t the end of the world though. There will always be customers willing to pay fair sums for good music. Audio Jungle doesn’t target them, so diversifying might be a good business decision to make. I look at all those pink diamonds on the top authors’ profiles wondering at what point they will start to disappear.
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The question for me to this is: Do the customers notice the difference between the Kontakt drums and a real drummer? Do they really want to have a real drummer on the track they want to buy? I personally don’t believe that. Most of the customers choose a track by the mood, the composition and the overall mixing quality. I don’t believe, that they hear a track in such detail and say:“Naaahh, I heard these drum sounds already.” and throw it away. You, as a producer, have this analytical hearing. Maybe you have used the Abbey Road drums very often and got bored about it. But the customers? They jump quickly from track to track.
AJ is a platform for short term products. Bought today, fogotten tomorrow. We are not Beethoven, Bach or Hans Zimmer who create music for eternity, because our customers don’t want music for eternity.
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That’s the right point here for stock music market, and more in general too. This is not so easy, but I’m sure we can find some solution, some “field” to dig to help us during these hard time and for the future. Life of musician is also to try hard to being able to adapt to the current situation, because money are not always here, gig too, market, or customers, or anything like that. This is sad of course, main devaluation of music is sad, but I’m sure a new model will appear, or something new that we don’t know yet, and will make enjoy our creativity without making us starving !
I’m not that naive, but in some way we have no choice, and we have to diversify as you suggest on your wise message both in term of composition but also in our source of income.
In some way, it’s better to start to think right now about the possibility that this stock earning will die, and find something, a concept or a compromise or call it as you want, than just waiting for the end.
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Have you guys ever thought what would happen if nobody devalued their work?
Your work is already devalued enough.
I mean, what’s next?
Maybe something like,
“Oh, we are so grateful that you’ve picked our product, so we want to pay you” 
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We are not ENVATO employees, but their suppliers, but when dialogue does not work in a company with its suppliers or employees, there is a decline. So rather than having union meetings on the forums that will never succeed, send your demands directly to the staff.
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AJ has not been adapted to ADP, promotion system encourages dumping. The bestsellers collects too many sales, leaving a penny for the rest. And many authors are now trying to WIN AT THE CASINO by uploading tracks at the lowest price in the hope that one will become a bestseller and even get featured and will hang in the search top and weekly top list forever
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That is the beauty of a free market, buyers and sellers can choose their terms, in the end the market decides the value. If sellers of a certain product band together in an effort to drive up costs, than that is a manipulated market, not representative of a true value. If you were on the consumer of the equation, you would cry foul if you found out the supermarkets were banding together keep the cost of eggs, meat or milk high, effectively creating a cartel.
At the end of the day, a market determines the value of a product, even a creative product. A creators perceived value of their work is often not representative of the true market value.
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I get your point, and that would be fine if there was no other factors involved. If this were a true ‘free market’ People could sell for $5 and that would be fine. Because there would be no incentive to do so, not so many would because there would be no benefits whatsoever. Envato encourages these low prices by rewarding those that price dump. So in this case, the prices at Audio Jungle aren’t really representative of prices in a “free” market.
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You make valid points however, this market is 100% manipulated by ENVATO in that they
- lie to everyone about author driven pricing. In theory we should be able to sell for $.01 cent if we truly control our prices, even free if we want to. The minimum price is $5 with fixed buyer and seller fees set aside for Envato
- The constantly promote on their front pages to customers “New and Hot under $20”
- They are rewarding price dumping of “popular files” which sell at $5 with endless “popular files” front page promotion creating an endless loop of selling the same cheap items over and over.
Envato is really determining the value of these products because they have the power to promote the tracks they want to promote. The reality is they have decided that the value of music files is $5 because that suits their interests. An Author earns .82 cents, but Envato will earn $6 in buyer and seller fees at the published $5 price.
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To keep up with your dubious comparison, supermarkets are not banding to keep prices up, they are actually doing everything to reduce costs by aggressively exploiting their suppliers. This is an issue that’s getting worse and is being exposed more and more to the general public who are starting to be outraged by this.
Authors are not cartels (thanks so much for adding insult to injury by the way), the platforms are. And just like supermarkets they are doing everything to exploit their suppliers and drive prices down. Down to a point where it amounts to nothing for authors.
Anyway, it’s nice to know you find the demise of authors being pushed into misery “beautiful”. Great ethics!
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