It does. But what I find even more disturbing is slowly realising that Elements are meant to satisfy those exact same customers as the credits system were designed to please. Anyway, another topic, but looking back it does not take much fantasy to connect the dots why the credit system were removed in my opinion. When in doubt, follow the money and it will all make sense.
I have been shopping my tracks around different sites last months, and what I can say is that subscription models can be as different as single track licensing can be. Some of the sub models are actually transparent and have a healthy minimum floor what the artist gets paid. Others sub models again are insanely horrible, not allowing PRO registration, not allowing content ID, while allowing broadcasting use.
If we try to look at the bright side for a moment, I think it is good that Elements is not filled up with stock music newbies. A lot of outstanding talent and experience is pooled inside Elements now. The Elements authors are in no way powerless, quite the opposite actually. And we have to remember this is a historical first time experiment for Envato, so brutally honest author feedback is extremely important wether they want to hear it or not.
I think the Elements authors just need to communicate together (if not doing already) and demand some healthy changes.
If no authors previously did work hard to negotiate PRO registration, broadcast licenses, content ID, no broadcast licensing in Elements etc. we all know how things would be different today.
Something else you should have in mind is that similar subscriptions exist on other sites too. So if Envato decides to completely remove Elements, those clients will simply go to the competition.
So from Envato’s point of view it’s either “make all of the authors happy”, or… “survive”.
I’m not jumping in here to be critical of Envato. But when you say “survive” - this is a situation where Envato obviously faces external pressure from competitors who are offering subscription programs that (prior to Envato adding audio to Elements) undercut the pricing for audio on this marketplace.
Envato needs to protect its survival and be competitive. But if this is what all marketplaces have to do to be competitive, it’s very possible that their survival might be protected, but the producers who make music won’t get that same benefit. Producers are facing (and contributing to, if they participate in some of the sub programs that undervalue music) tremendous devaluation of production music.
Yes, it is perfectly understandable that they need to be competitive but they should be competing with other music libraries not with their own market. I don’t know if driving customers from the market to Elements is being competitive.
They probably decided to grow a subscription base market as fast as they can so its easier to drive their own traffic to elements than to only advertive outsite and get new traffic.
I agree. I don’t see any way that aggressively pushing marketplace buyers away from the marketplace and into Elements helps music producers (especially the majority of authors who sell exclusively through AudioJungle and do not participate in Elements).
But based on Envato’s moves in the last several months, they appear to have determined that this is what is best for them.
I’m more than willing to listen to others’ perspectives on this that are different than mine. But there’s not much communication between exclusive AJ authors and Envato staff on this subject. Authors are left to try to figure these developments out and how they will be impacted by them on their own.
So from Envato’s point of view it’s either “make all of the authors happy”, or… “survive”.
Authors need to make themselves happy, put a real value on themselves, put a real value on the digital music assets you own and control, then you will survive. If music producers take every deal presented, well then that is another story. All of my writings are mostly geared at criticizing weak handed, yet, in many cases, pretty talented authors. I mean it’s getting to the point where when is enough enough?
Let’s suppose a business model were to pop up where the offer to a music producer was “sell your tracks for $1 a license and retain 50% of the earnings”…would you take that deal?
It seems as though that there are enough suckers out there who would accept this kind of deal.
Many music producers accept “sign your cues into our library and give us 100% of the publishing, we control the master sound recording too, in perpetuity. You retain 100% writers share, in exchange we will pay you nothing… $0…”
It’s incredible how many writers accept this deal. They just give the cue away, forever, and eliminate any possibility to exploit their own creations other ways.
I wonder how elements authors would react if they were actually able to see first hand how often their music was being downloaded. There is a reason why all of these sub sites do not share that kind of data with music producers. In a nutshell, tech guys and the brains behind these sites know how dumb and gullible musicians are when it comes to business, so they take advantage of them. Artists just say “sure take my work, pay me whatever, I’ll take anything.”
One of the most unpleasant thing is keeping silence from Envato about this deal. It definitely means that real issue exists, when «authority» stops talking to workers, because intension is in the air. But I hope Envato will give authors at least some information about their intentions, tactic, and explanations about what they’re going to reach by their actions. We realize, that market undergoes changes, consequently our strategy possibly should be changed too, and we would like to understand which way. So it would be great to have some feedback from Envato.
Hey @GregBMusic, I think I’m in the same situation as you are. I wonder if I missed the boat in terms of climbing the AJ ladder. With the current Elements discussion happening I will be taking the same path as you - uploading, observing and ultimately making that call to go non-exclusive. Wish I had gotten in on the ground floor
There have been for ages sites that give away their music for free, so yes, producers who “work” for nothing do exist. Some people simply enjoy making music, and don’t expect to be payed for their “efforts”. In fact when you google for “royalty free music” the topmost result (non-sponsored) is exactly a very popular site like that. Easily as popular as AJ itself.
The problem is not free music or very cheap music for that matter, these services resonates with anyone who does not have budget for music, I personally have no problem with that, nor do I feel my business threatened by that.
The problem is offering the exact same valuable music for free/comical price to customers who actually had an intention (and good budgets) to pay properly.
So what can be done? A lot of things, but I will mention the most simplistic ones and those who are super easy to change:
Remove the Elements banner from the markets ( basic business respect for every exclusive market author )
Drastically limit the music track count per author AND have a clickable direct AJ author profile link in Elements. In the same way as in this weeks sale campaign. This will give Elements authors significant cross over traffic —> AudioJungle. At least as long as they don’t offer all their tracks in Elements.
There’s one thing I can tell you - what you’re proposing is not in Envato’s best interest. At this point this site makes purely business driven decisions. They’re not concerned with the author’s wishes, because they (Envato) are in survival mode. Simple as that.
Depends on how you look at it. Is it in Envato’s interest to alienate and disrespect authors month after month? Maybe, I doubt it. Is it in Envato’s interest to mislead customers every day of the week with this banner? Maybe, I hope not.
I don’t know in how much survival mode Envato is, so I’m not going to speculate much in that. But I doubt the overall markets are doing really bad. The sales numbers are quite open and transparent on the markets, so I guess those who follow their biggest market Themeforest can answer that.
Since when did Envato enter “survival mode” and why did music producers enter all out “panic price dumping mode”? Did you study this and scroll to slide 13
