Some ideas about improving review queue

Yep, this is how it’s worked out for me, I used to send all my (small amounts of) referral traffic here and now I don’t, but I think anyone complaining about market saturation is really complaining about their inability to market their music. I don’t blame AJ or the market for anything in regards to sales; if you want to sell anything in this world (especially something as competitive and saturated as music) you have to be willing to work at the business side, very rarely will you be in the right place (or market) at the right time in order for it to magically happen for you. Most of the time the market will already be over saturated by the time you get there.

3 Likes

The one thing i totaly agree here the most is to raise quality standards! I have some tracks wich sound poor and bad wich, in the moment, i was not capable to hear…Those tracks and poor mix and mastering tracks should be not aproved OR soft rejected if the idea and arragement is good but sound is bad and requires more work…One chance alowed and after that hard reject…
I OFFICIALY DECIDED TO:
Stop uploading on Audiojungle as exclusive author because the market is currently in very bad condition.I invested alot of efforts in my lastest tracks just to see them on 4-5 and even 6th page shortly after aproval…I will continue to visit forums and see what is going on and see the current situation with search engine.
@LumenMedia thank you for this thread, this is absolutely what we need and i hope the Envato team will consider this idea. +1

2 Likes

Hello,
As a brand new guy here, I’m glad this library door was open. :wink:

I see it like this: Audiojungle is a very big, varied and alive marketplace. Many buyers probably value the diversity and huge choice of tracks on offer when they buy here instead of going to other libraries with only a few select authors or narrower entry rules (at least, that was my case as a past Envato buyer).

I guess you’re right about tightening the quality control, but limiting the flow of aspiring authors or deleting accounts? This could potentially have undesirable side effects too. Online companies are very fragile ecosystems and it doesn’t take much to lose «whatever already works» and, with it, customers.

Since Envato (as a whole) is a success story; I would be very prudent about changing too many parameters like «10 tracks portfolio approval» or «deleting accounts with only 1 sales», etc.

Just my humble opinion, but there are composers here who were inactive (or with only a few sales) for a very long time who later became pretty big sellers. If Audiojungle had deleted these accounts because they generated close to zero sales for a long while, Envato would have lost many, many future dollars by now…

I too think that increasing the number of reviewers might be one of the only ways to reduce queue time, I mean, without changing the spirit of this open marketplace too much. :slight_smile:

4 Likes

Yeah you’re right about diversity being a success factor, however lately here on AJ the lure of instant massive sales have shifted the supply in another direction - copying a best selling track and creating market inertia. I think more tracks should be rejected in general - putting mediocre music out for sale isn’t helping anyone, not buyers, not Envato, not the authors.

While I totally agree that one of AJ’s main appeal is the spirit of “inclusiveness” and welcoming of new authors, I believe a “cap” on endless zero-selling items would be in order. It should be easy, just limit the portfolio per new author to a small number (i.e. 3) - if your items start to sell, increase upload quota and portfolio size. If not, delete item and try again.

It would also be nice if tracks that sound extremely similar to existing items were more often rejected - anyone will understand why. “Unfortunately your track was rejected because it sounds too similar to this one (insert link).” Reviewers will still have the option to approve if the track is of outstanding quality.

To return to the topic, review time has never been an issue for me. I don’t spend a lot of time rolling my thumbs after uploading, I just start on the next project. I guess it would be kind of sad to see it grow into months, but it’s really production quality and production rate that bring in sales per month. If all you’re looking for is feedback on your track, use the forums or some other community instead. And about “timing” uploads, yes, while it’s true that having items approved during weekends is generally a bad thing, that would more easily be solved by simply not publishing items during those days. I mean, the review can take place anytime, but have the publishing of the approved item lumped together on monday morning or create an automated schedule to distribute the publishing over the week.

Finally, thumbs up to Envato and the reviewers for doing an excellent job. Every day here is amazing :sunglasses: :+1:

2 Likes

I agree that approving tons of near identical pieces probably do not help queue length, but at the same time, I guess the line is somewhat thin between a «copy» and, let’s say, «a track in a similar vibe».

That said, I studied Audiojungle quite a bit before joining as a seller (I decided to start by submitting short sound effects, so I’m no great competition for composers at this point). And I must say that my brain was about to explode listening to all these «corporate» delayed notes!

That was the main category where I had the feeling of listening to a devilish line of cloned tunes, as if they were all made by an evil machine frenetically printing one after another…

Returning to the topic of queue length, what if there was a few different ones for different genres instead of a unique funnel queue?

2 Likes

But It can be a buyer’s account for searching and collecting items or something else.

2 Likes

After yesterday post, i thought may be good idea is to allow some authors WITHOUT rejections or very very low (close to zero) rejection to post their item without review at all. If Envato shifted toward selling platform, this may be logical step and lessen burden on review team. [quote=“Stockwaves, post:25, topic:33401”]
While I totally agree that one of AJ’s main appeal is the spirit of “inclusiveness” and welcoming of new authors, I believe a “cap” on endless zero-selling items would be in order. It should be easy, just limit the portfolio per new author to a small number (i.e. 3) - if your items start to sell, increase upload quota and portfolio size. If not, delete item and try again.
[/quote]
I like this idea. May be 3 is too low number, but inital portfolio of 10 track is more than enough

Good idea, but really hard to implement, mainly because it is too hard to define what is really “too close” means. [quote=“Stockwaves, post:25, topic:33401”]
while it’s true that having items approved during weekends is generally a bad thing, that would more easily be solved by simply not publishing items during those days. I mean, the review can take place anytime, but have the publishing of the approved item lumped together on monday morning or create an automated schedule to distribute the publishing over the week.
[/quote]
Awesome idea! I also think that releasing track on weekend is a bad idea and may be scheduled release is good.

2 Likes

Envato should separate the Author profile from Buyer profile…And those accounts should be diferent styled and easily recognized…

I am not sure this is possible to make, because Envato has limited reviewers stuff, they can not monitor every 350K+ tracks and compare them with new ones. Plus,imagine they decided to reject tracks with such reason.
What do we have as a result?
~50-80% of submissions will be passed here, what is catastrophic loss of money, and as a result catastrophic loss of potential authors.
There is also problem to recognize what is exactly “too similar”. Similar what? Instruments? Key? Tempo? Chord progression? Everything? How much is it similar accourding to “this one (insert link)”?

Lets imagine such situation. Every day audiojungle releases around 200-350 new tracks.
So lets say we have 1500 tracks scheduled to monday for happy selling. Whats happing? It is terrible market overload.
What could Envato do in such situation?
Making slots of releases per day, which is terrible and makes no sense, accourding to system, which we have right now.

2 Likes

Disabling uploads on specific days such as weekends etc.

This does not guarantee that your track will eventually be approved in the weekend, becaue reviewe queue is not stable.
Even you want to disable approving in the weekend, this leads to empty market on the weekend, and huge overload on the week. Do you think this will ever help to improve review queue?

That is the part of “weekend aproval” problem…The best solution for review time is definitely to hire more reviewers…But definitely, because there is a wave of alot of new authors and definitely Envato should consider to engage more reviewers.
There is an perfect example of one RF market wich says "Currently we are overoladed with new content and uploading will be avaliable on (date)"
The best solution ever…Will make alot of space for new items to get more attention and potential sales.Not to mention how things will become much stable…For now i see this market too much opened and a bunch of bad items push out alot of good items.

2 Likes

I think that people (like myself) who have uploaded multiple songs and haven’t had any ‘hard rejected’ should have there songs reviewed faster somehow. I’m not sure how this would work, but i’ve been uploading a few songs a week since the start of the year (I have 25 currently on audio jungle in my portfolio, with 9 in the que) and I feel that Audio Jungle should give authors who haven’t have any songs rejected a shorter waiting time. e.g. any authors who have a long record of producing good sounding music with every single upload, the reviewers could quickly check the song, check the description and all the tags etc and then approve them faster.

Again i’m not sure if this is a good idea or how it would work, but its just a quick idea I had.

TitanStayer, you’re right , AJ will lose a lot of money because of these innovations.

As a new author it’s been great to jump straight in and start selling tunes but having had a listen around, I think the quality threshold is lower compared to other sites. I had a listen around before I started uploading and for $19, you can get an amazing piece of production or something very basic. I’d love there to be a higher quality standard applied, maybe this would thin the field.

1 Like

Your last sale was $19 23 days ago.
So inspiring. :slight_smile:
About improving review queue… It was always big stream for uploading new items from new or old authors whatever. It is not a reason. The reason is , please hire more curators on review team that is it. It is so simple. All the rest is excuses.

There is also problem to recognize what is exactly “too similar”. Similar what? Instruments? Key? Tempo? Chord progression? Everything? How much is it similar accourding to “this one (insert link)”

What about “this is too similar”. Period. No explanation.

How would this be any different from “we’re sorry but you’re submission did not meet our standard”? That’s just as-- if not more-- subjective.

Authors may not like this idea, but it shouldn’t be because it is “too subjective”. The review process already is hugely subjective.

After yesterday post, i thought may be good idea is to allow some authors WITHOUT rejections or very very low (close to zero) rejection to post their item without review at all. If Envato shifted toward selling platform, this may be logical step and lessen burden on review team.

Yes. This is a great idea-- one that I myself have proposed. Usually I get a chorus of people telling me that this wouldn’t be “fair”.

(To be clear: under this scheme, I myself would almost certainly not be granted “no review” status)

I think one of the best ways for AJ to slow the flood of new submission is to do exactly what they are doing-- slowly allow the review queue to increase to multiple weeks-- even months-- at a time. Certainly they should be seeing quite a lot of lower-quality submissions going down simply because so many of those authors depend on uploading a stream of lower-quality works that are churned out every single day and get a few sales before disappearing into the depths of the library never to be purchased again.

(This, by the way, has long been my own strategy here at AJ, and I’m forced to admit that it isn’t a good one and should be disincentivized).

I have seen some drop-off in sales as the queue has increased, and as a result I’ve been forced to produce higher quality music, as I need to get more sales during the brief period of exposure that new submissions receive. This is only good for me and AudioJungle, and so I think this is the right thing to do.

But we have reviewers to make sure that doesn’t happen. This lengthy review queue makes it impossible to run a viable business, unless you are well established with several best sellers, or possibly a massive portfolio. I think reducing this queue to no longer than a week is prudent.

1 Like