Some ideas about improving review queue

Hi! It seems we crossed another anti-record on Audiojungle. The review waiting time approached 16 days and last few days almost every day added +1 to this length. So here is my suggestions about changes in review process. I hope it willl be heard, so here it is:

  1. New authors allowed to sell on Audiojungle only after initial 10 track portfolio approval. Some libraries have this rules. Before submitting, you need to show, that you really have outstanding portfolio. Number of such tracks varied from 4 to 10, so this is must have rule for eliminate non-professional participants. Initial portfolio review process could take 2-3 months, so no rush here. This will help to clean reviewers from potentially low quality participants.
  2. Delete all accounts with only 1 sales after 2-3 years.
  3. Delete all account without any sales after 2-3 years.
  4. Review team need to raise quality bar again. They are alredy did awesome job, and quality of AJ portfolio improved tremendously during last years, but you can still hear poorly mixed and mastered tracks, leacked through review gate.
    I know, this is may be not the best ideas, but we need to do something with such unpredictable and bloated review queue as we have now.
    P.S. Limiting number of weekly submissions is also good idea, i believe
    P.P.S I also think we need PREDICTABLE date of releases. I have some examples of how releasing on weekend affected sales of an item. Especially with this new mumbo-jumbo search engine, tending to place new items on 2nd and 3rd page.
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Excellent points.

Yes, I think this is a great idea.

Yes, as long as it’s within reason. I think a maximum of 7 submissions per week would be reasonable - considering there are some authors that upload new tracks daily.

+1, agree.

It would be interesting to see what the staff / review team think of these ideas.

yes 16 days a bit too much. Looks like Envato don’t need new music in amount as it was before therefore first: - no exposure for new items ( no sense to work hard on new music cause it will disappear in few days after approval) and second: - 16 days review queue length. :slight_smile:

Audiojungle is not a production library. It is RF market, so do not be confused. Absolutly different things. I guess you know prices per track/PRO friendly of production libraries, and RF market with 19$/per track without PRO.

What about 2 sales for 2-3 year? 3 sales? 10?

This I would agree in terms of cleaning dead accounts, but I do not understand how such sanctions would affect review process.

This would only INCREASE time of reviewing, because reviewers then have to rise their bar as well. Not every reviewer I guess can hear really techincal/mixing mistakes in tracks.

Yes, it is good idea for authors, but why Envato would not support it?
In terms of market I am not sure they interested in it, because it would be catastrophic loss of money. Lets say, we have here production companies, with state of employees, and they registered as one person. Tones of sound/tracks coming everyday from them, and Envato only wins from this situation!

This is really nice idea, but unfortunatly would increase time of reviewing :wink:

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@TitanSlayer, i will try to reply to your answer:

  1. One mistake, which i believe Envato did last year is an omission of initial test. Applying library methods to AJ is not bad thing. May be few years ago AJ was more like RF market, but now it is diverse library with various genres, various licenses, etc. It looks more like LIBRARY.
  2. Deleting account with 1 sale - it is just an idea. May be 2-3-4 or less than 10 sales is good idea too. Where i got 1 sale number? By browsing endless list of author with only 1 sale.
  3. Deleting not selling account is not about review lenght, i agree here. This is more about creating consistent landscape of working and selling accounts.
  4. Raising quality standards higher does not mean longer review time. It will cut those so-so authors and less than average music. And if reviewer unable to listen mix and mastering mistakes, it should be replaced by those who can.
  5. Predictable release date no way linked to increase of review time.
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Which methods do you exactly want?
There lots of it - payments per six months/quaters, 2-3 months submission reviewing, tons of papers etc.
When you said [quote=“LumenMedia, post:1, topic:33401”]
New authors allowed to sell on Audiojungle only after initial 10 track portfolio approval
[/quote]
What does it mean? Can you sell stuff only after 10 succesful submission? What about @Michael_Starr who managed to make 1200+ sales with only 5 items in his portfolio?
Imagine the loss of money for Envato, if they would approved your strategy. So, the idea of:

Would be OK, but this

Definetly would not work here.

How far should Envato rise this bars?

For example I want to start selling my track 19 of August in Monday, when should I upload it? 15 of August? 10 of August?

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Dear @TitanSlayer, please, be friendly to me. :slight_smile: May be you not aware about time of your releases, but most of us aware of it. And when you plan to release track on working days, and it shifted to weekends due constant increasing of review waiting time, this is no way good thing. I did not ask for more papers, nor about payments per quater, i suggested to create initial test. Thats it.

As i asked already - higher. :slight_smile: Not allowing average or poor quality track to be released.

Fixed time of review lenght will be awesome. Let it be 14 days, or may be one month, but fixed. So you can plan when your track will be online.
By the way - do you think current situation is OK?

I guess you should create your own RF market.

Current system is absolutly fine for me, I had an experience working with production libraries, digital distributers and so on, so I know what I am talking about.
There is current system, current envato employees state and I do not see any reasons if they have to switch to your suggestions.
I think it is very clear that Envato not going to expand the staff and cut salaries to employees to increase time of reviewing, because of the authors, who have no idea how really production companies work and complain about the 2 week period of reviewing, which is actually NOTHING if you compare reviewing/submission time in production/trailer music library.
SO
New authors submissions limiting, limting numbers of weekly submissions, even may be bar rising, would be only catastrophic loss of money for Envato, and it has nothing to do with improving review queue. You know, you are not alone here.
I am done.

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Oh, thank you, very constructive answer.[quote=“TitanSlayer, post:8, topic:33401”]
because of the authors, who have no idea how really production companies work and complain about the 2 week period of reviewing,
[/quote]
Man, are you serious? Do you think i have no idea how production companies work? Thank you again. You wrong. I know how most of libraries and RF markets work. And knowing it does not mean Envato have no things for improvement.

Thanks. At least. :slight_smile:

Why do you need faster review times? Imagine how fast your new tracks will be pushed away.
-1 for faster review. Current flow speed is good for items to be noticed imho. If you upload on a regular basis (no matter how frequently) the review time will not be an issue for you.

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+1 for fast review

  • Qualification test before the right for new authors to upload their stuff.

3 years before AJ had a multiple choice test you need to pass.
Many other high quality RF sites request two samples of your work before they grant uploading.

I vote for that pre-qualification as THIS would reduce the long review queue naturally
and reduce many hard rejects that jam the queue as well
On top of that it´s less work for rewievers cause they can invest their time in reviewing quality work.

7 Likes

Review times don’t have any direct correlation to how long your new item stays on the front page. You can have a review time of 1 second but if only 10 items are sent in or pass review every day your track will be there for a long time. Long review times are the result of too many item submissions.

The number of submissions that get through is what affects your visibility. Only stricter reviewers, submission limits, or author tests can change that.

2 Likes

Correct me if im wrong, but the huge amount of items uploaded, approved and reviewed each day are responsible for pushing new tracks away.
The amount of time it takes reviewers to get items approved has nothing to do with that, if the review queue is 1 day or 17 days, it changes nothing regarding the longevity of the new items on the frontpage or the “genre” page, since the influx of items will be the same.

Unless you are saying, that long review times scare away uploaders?

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I didn’t mean the new items on the front page. I guess customers also search items in the genre page sorted by the date.

I think its quite obvious if the flow of tracks are increased your item will be on 10th+ page much faster.

Front page, each genre by date, all the same… You completely missed my point. Read RobertSlump’s reply too, he said the same thing I did.

Yes, it seems i don’t get it.
I mean the amount of time the item stays on the first page. Doesn’t it affected by the speed of the reviews? Let’s say if only 30 items approved per day, it means i will stay on the first page for 1 day and if 60 items, by the half of the day i will be already on page 2 (let’s imagine all the tracks from the same genre)

I agree. Wait 16 days before approval is too long! Envato need to increase the level of quality. But 7 tracks in a week is not enough. 14 tracks per week is optimal.

You are talking about review SPEED. That is not the same as review TIME/QUEUE. If they reviewed only 30 items per day the review TIME would be something like 24 weeks and increasing rapidly, and soon it would be over a year with the current amount of submissions. Right now they approve about 204 items per day. They probably reject more. It’s the amount of submissions that count. Since the review times are increasing, there are more submissions each day than the reviewers can review.

If they become twice as strict, they could approve 102 items per day and you would see more exposure, even if the total number of submissions is the same. But the review TIME/QUEUE would still be the same.

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:sunglasses:

A valid question though, but for other reasons, is if the number of actual submissions (not approvals) per day would increase if review times were shorter. My thinking here is that many soft rejected submissions get resubmitted, and some authors may not be as effective in submitting approved content if they receive less rejections/feedback per time period. Like, author A submits items 1, 2, 3 - then while working on items 4, 5, 6 gets rejection of 1, 2, 3 and resubmits 1, 2, 3 and makes changes (according to the newly learned feedback) to 4, 5, 6 and submits those as well. In a scenario with faster review time, that author will submit item 1, and get rejection/feedback already while working on item 2. Now items 2-6 will be produced without the mistakes made on item 1, which will save time for the author who now can produce more approvable tracks faster. OK, maybe not a big deal, but the math should hold :wink:

Raising the bar on submissions is IMO the right way to go if the main problem is saturation. However, there may be other factors weighing in, like more traffic coming in to AJ from all authors who market externally. No approvals - no external marketing.

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I believe the only way to decrease the queue time is to either increase the number of reviewers (or shift hours) or decrease the number of submissions, any other suggestions are another topic concerning market saturation. Increasing quality standards should have little-to-no affect on review time, unless you are talking about lowering quality standards to such a point as to not even require a subjective review process. Instituting even more prerequisites and requirements for a market like AJ is a bit of a ridiculous suggestion, as this is already a bottom-tiered royalty free market, not an exclusive library market or production company, and as such, should remain open-submission, as this is the best approach for AJ clientele and the target demographics of (mostly) corporate stock music. Envato knows this. Deleting non-active accounts is a good idea, but I don’t think it will change anything except for Envato’s server costs.

1 Like