To all Elements contributors

Envato Authors AudioJungle
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Hey guys and gals,

First of all: this post is by no means a complain or accusation of any kind, but just a simple query on something that involves us all. It’s been more than 4 months since the implementation of Elements, a platform that as you know has resulted in a pretty serious blow for us, the non-invited marketplace exclusive authors. It’s also known by all that the whole fairytale of aiming the suscription platform at a new target of costumers was a lie, or at least failed big time as a strategy, so they are now fiercely trying to migrate the marketplace costumer base to Elements, which will lastly be our final nail in the coffin. All this said, what I really wanted to know (and probably many colleagues from the community) is if this massacre has at least been of any significant benefit for those who are taking part in.

So to sum up, my questions are:

  1. After the implementation of Elements and the ultra aggressive mailing campaigns, banners and pop-ups everywhere, did you experienced a drop in your average sales from the marketplace?
  2. If so, do the revenues you are obtaining from Elements compensate that same drop?
  3. Did the revenues you get from Elements significantly boosted your incomes?

If the answer to this last question is a categorical “yes”, then truly, from my heart, my sincere congratulations. It’s more than understandable that you stick to the new model and the rest of us will just have to find a way to move forward. But if the improvements in your incomes were not as significant as you expected, I encourage you to re-think and re-consider your participation in this model that is undervaluing our craft so badly.

If you, like some top authors are already doing, remove your items (or at least most of them) from the subscription catalog, the costumers will progressively start to return to the market, we will all improve our sales, and promote a much healthier ecosystem for everyone. Of course, this has to be a united move of most of the authors involved.

Well, sorry about the long post and sharing such a naive point of view. I eagerly await to hear your feedback on the outcomes of Elements so far, but of course, you don’t need to answer if you don’t want to.

Thanks friends! All the best!
WM.

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+1

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+1 Would definitely be good to know some of this info.

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+1 Very well expressed and with a lot of sense. Thank you because finally comes someone who expresses so well what we all think but we find it hard to say.
Something that catches my attention is the little that the authors of Elements speak in the forums. Perhaps it is that the results are not so bad and do not respond for fear of having bad answers from us?

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Thanks to you, @Octopusic. It could be. I have very dear colleagues enlisted in Elements and by no means I would blame them for taking that opportunity if it’s truly beneficial for their economics. But if it’s not, they might just reconsider their decissions as it’s starting to be a disaster for the rest of us and for the business of selling stock music overall.

Plus, we must all keep in mind that they’ll probably open the gates to all authors sooner or later as they did with the other markets and the share to split then will be nickels. As for the sales, on my end there has been yet another huge slope since the last banner spamming.

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+1

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+1

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I was not invited to the Elements. Even if I was invited, I would not upload all my tracks there.
My sales on Audiojungle have dropped significantly since November, after the introduction of the elements. And this is sad.

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It would be very nice to have a neutral, transparent and open discussion about this yes. Envato has not been very helpful with transparency or communication, so maybe we as authors could at least communicate together as adults? :slight_smile:

We have plenty of threads we can rant about Elements, but please let’s just encourage feedback from different AJ Elements authors here, and save the rants and emotions for other threads. The experience must of course be quite different as any market experience is very different as well.

On VideoHive many authors have shared their experience, so there is not reason to not share it on AJ either. Every market will react quite different to Elements, and remember it’s also a first time experiment for Envato when each new market is added.

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The thing is that it’s not in the interest of Elements authors to share this information (I don’t personally have music on Elements).

Good luck with that. :slight_smile:

Anyway, here is what would happen:

• Elements author says “Sales are great, more than compensates”.

Everybody else will feel even more left out and start pressuring Envato to join. The thing with Elements is that it won’t work if everyone can join. It only works with a limited selection.

• Elements author says “Sales are bad”

Everybody will pressure them into leaving Elements so that sales can return to the marketplace (so they think).

As a side note, my own marketplace sales have not gone down. In fact, I’m well above average now in March, as well as last month.

Now, I’m not saying Elements isn’t affecting someone’s sales, it probably is. But for as long as I can remember, there has been outrage on the forum about every single change made on the site. Every single one. Because someone’s sales ALWAYS go down, every month.

Anyway, here is what I believe:

Earnings are lower for top authors in Elements, because of the major difference in site design.

Earnings are the same or better for the average author, and much better for the low earner.

If everyone would join Elements, sales would go down for everyone.

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For me the sales have actually increased since the introduction of Elements, butt then… came to a complete stop thanks to the Experiment. :worried:

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This might be true for some, but still I think the main reason why Elements authors don’t feel very tempted to chime in with their experience is because they are not tempted to join in on a heated discussion whether Elements is the devil or not :slight_smile:

Happy Elements authors are reporting at the VideoHive forum so why should not Audio experiences be shared as well? Is it so unthinkable to have an AJ Elements sales monitor? We have an incredible transparency at AudioJungle with open sales number and everything (yeah I know it’s to much of a good thing there…)

Anyway, it’s in everybody’s interest to have an open and as neutral as possible discussion about how Elements affects AJ.

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Which further proves my point…

I’m curious as to why you didn’t start a thread saying:

“Elements is great - my marketplace sales increased”. :wink:

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That is part of “not in the interest”. :slight_smile:

Anyone is free to share if they want. But “should”? No.

I think it’s very reasonable to believe that if you have your music on Elements, your marketplace sales will go down, maybe significantly.

But, I don’t think that EVERYONE’s marketplace sales are as affected as some will have you believe. Some effect, yes, probably.

If you have unique, good music that a buyer wants, they will buy it. If you have clones that can be replaced by 1,000 other tracks, well, then you might only see a few sales, or none at all.

StockSounds still seems to sell quite a few licenses. Shouldn’t those sales also disappear?

December 2017 - 1851 sales. December 2018 - 2024 sales.
January 2018 - 1803 sales. January 2019 - 1654 sales.
February 2018 - 1718 sales. February 2019 - 1515 sales.

And that slight drop might as well be explained by anything else, like the redesign.

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I am very much in favor of the premise of this thread.

I am NOT a fan of Elements in any way, due to its damagingly low pricing, absurd unlimited downloads policy, complete lack of transparency in terms of asset usage, and its oblique, unaccountable compensation scheme.

That said: The rough earnings figures we’ve heard - let’s round up to an even $2000 monthly - don’t make sense to many of us, in light of the unfortunate conditions I listed above.

Now consider this:
It is relatively simple and inexpensive to create music with today’s technology (with software easily and illegally downloaded for free even, but that’s another discussion).

In many, many countries, $2000 a month is an above average salary. So if someone from one of those countries could easily make that much money selling music online - music which was cheap and easy to make, music to which they have no particular artistic or sentimental attachment - why wouldn’t they?

What we’re seeing here, ladies and gentlemen, just like the world’s manufacturing has been delegated to China and call centers were outsourced to countries like India and the Philippines - the creation of stock music (and other digital assets as well) is being shifted toward under-performing (formerly Communist) economies, primarily in Eastern Europe.

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Fully agree with the idea.

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I agree with @Flumen that " If you have unique, good music that a buyer wants, they will buy it." I think too many for too long have been chasing the “Corporate Rainbow” and unfortunately the professionals’ tracks are better. Copying top sellers really is a bad strategy, and consequently if authors place their top sellers on Elements then it is game over. Do something niche, do it well and your sales should remain stable on this marketplace. Who am I? No-one but I have found quirky tracks to be good sellers. Strange isn’t that - 3 Halloween tracks sold already this year. Do something unique and do it well.

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I think that so far no one will be share into AJ (from the authors on the Elements). Income is a personal matter. Some do not want much “PR” (who is lucky there) because a huge number of authors are against Elements and they have not been invited. And the second (who received low incomes) will not share their failure.
Something like this.

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this topic is to all audio elements contributors or to all contributors on elements like video, graphics etc ?

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I think it’s important that people start sharing experiences because it’s no secret that the Elements Audio has a lot of room for improvement. It is by no means a perfect draft. Luckily Envato seem to be doing a survey related to if they want to introduce different price tiers or not. That would be a big step in a more healthy direction.

Another very interesting topic is how the free range track count orchestrated by the authors themselves are starting to play out. All if these issues needs transparency and a healthy discussion/analysis. It is still early and there are a lot of other factors than Elements affecting sales numbers as well of course.

Stocksounds might be a quite good point of measure but alone not enough at all. I find the drop of sales in totally fresh new items quite big when monitoring Top New Files/Sold the last day, compared to last year (talking about before latest experiment). Also its an obvious drop in the popular files list (even with the latest experiment best seller boost). Of course Elements is not the only reason, but I do think, as naive as I am, that the Elements banner might be working :slight_smile:

It would also be interesting to know from Elements authors if they see any drop of more generic tracks compared to more unique ones?

Hopefully some Elements authors would like to report their experience so far, or when the next payments arrive. I can remember 2 authors speaking on the forum earlier, 1 happy and 1 neutral. Thats what we´ve got officially so far :slight_smile: