Instead of claiming vague “legal issues” as an excuse not to set minimum prices, it would more helpful (and convincing) if they would supply information regarding the specific statute(s) that apply.
I suppose the legal team are reluctant to divulge how they interpret law and in so doing, bring about the discussion of their competency in the forums.
Getting back to the focus of the thread (I’m sorry that my post took it off course slightly) as Mojo pointed out, the way that Envato chooses to display whether or not an item is successful or not has nothing to do with these antitrust laws that have been so vaguely thrown around. It is flipping frustrating that they choose not to engage in discussing great ideas, like this one, that it’s authors put forward to improve the platform. It feels like they just can’t be arsed to deal with any of it, and the only changes to the site that happen seem to be aesthetic and don’t address any of the deeper issues.
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From the Australian Competition and Consumer Protection Commission…Link provided too:
Price fixing
It is illegal for competitors to work together to fix prices rather than compete against each other. This conduct restricts competition, and can force prices up and reduce choices for consumers and other businesses.
- What is price fixing?
- Impact of price fixing
- Signs of possible price fixing in tenders
- Exceptions to price fixing
- Find out more about cartels
- More information
What is price fixing?
Price fixing occurs when competitors agree on pricing rather than competing against each other. In relation to price fixing, the Competition and Consumer Act refers to the ‘fixing, controlling or maintaining’ of prices. A price fixing cartel occurs when competitors make written, informal or verbal agreements or understandings on:
- prices for selling or buying goods or services
- minimum prices
- a formula for pricing or discounting goods and services
- rebates, allowances or credit terms.
Price fixing agreements do not have to be formal; they can be a ‘wink and a nod’, made over a drink in the local pub, at an association meeting or at a social occasion. The important point is not how the agreement or understanding was made or even how effective it is, but that competitors are working out their prices collectively and not individually.
Sometimes competing businesses will sell goods or services at the same or similar price levels so that the price fluctuations of one are matched by equivalent fluctuations by the others. Although this may seem like price fixing behaviour, it is not necessarily the result of collusive behaviour between companies.
Legitimate commercial reasons for why a business may adjust its prices to match a competitor include responding to highly visible prices displayed by competitors (e.g. petrol price boards) or competitors quickly adjusting their prices to match price movements (known as ‘parallel pricing’).
Impact of price fixing
When businesses get together to fix, control or maintain prices, it can affect consumers, as well as small businesses that rely on those suppliers for their livelihood.
Take freight for example. A lot of consumer goods are transported by freight. If the price of freight is artificially maintained or inflated by a cartel, it can affect the whole supply chain, and result in higher prices for all sorts of goods and services.
Signs of possible price fixing in tenders
Signs of price fixing may include:
- tenders or quotes that are much higher than expected. This may indicate collusive pricing, or it may just be overpricing (not illegal in itself). It may simply reveal that your estimates are inaccurate. It is in your commercial interest to make enquiries and determine whether your price expectations are reasonable
- all suppliers raise prices simultaneously and beyond what seems to be justified by changes in input costs. You can ask suppliers why this is so. You might also consider surveying suppliers so you are better equipped to recognise suspicious pricing movements
- prices submitted are much higher than previous tenders or published price lists
- tenders are missing detailed ‘workings’ to show how the tender price was calculated, where this was requested (this may indicate cover pricing)
- a new supplier’s price is lower than the usual businesses tendering. This may indicate there has been collusion among the incumbent businesses tendering
- prices drop markedly after a new supplier tenders. This may indicate that the existing suppliers have been colluding and the new supplier has forced them to compete.
Exceptions to price fixing
Exceptions to the prohibitions on price fixing exist for certain joint production or supply of goods or services and for certain agreements for the collective acquisition of goods or services. Agreements between related companies are also exempted. The joint venture exception is complex, and legal advice should be sought by anyone considering a joint venture that may otherwise breach the cartel provisions.
+1
+1 of course, been thinking about it from the first day I’m at AJ. And don’t understand WHY it is not so yet. There are guys who sell sounds, and for example there is a guy Sound-Ideas at the top on the second place on AJ who will soon become the first on AJ, but he sells sounds and his revenue is much less then Pinkzebra’s one, I guess. At least it will be very unfair.
Well folks a lot of the comments are being censored. We all just want to understand the law and the logic because the response is:
" we are told by our legal team that under the current pricing model we have, we as in Envato cannot be involved in any way in the price setting of the author items
Therefore, we cannot set a minimum or a maximum price on our marketplace…"
I just want to ask Envato though, hasn’t a minimum price for a piece of music indirectly been set at $5 as it stands now? I do think this is a fair question. Should we not be able to sell for as little as 1 cent if we so chose to sell at that price?
Could Envato not just ask the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission what they can and can not do?
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Yeah, well, first we get our $4,2 share, which is basically %90 of your work’s value, theeeen we start being strict with the legal stuff.
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Can we stay on topic, please?
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Can we get an official answer for this complain? It’s been years since authors are asking about this problem. More and more low priced items are getting higher position in popular pages, or is it what Envato wants from authors?
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My bad. Thought this was a question about current A/B tests.
@KingDog
Thanks for the response!
So, are we to understand that this is something that will be tested? Excellent!
Sorry I miss understood. I thought you were talking about the ordering of files test that’s ongoing. I have no idea if this will be tested or not.
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@KingDog, just a simple question that implies a very simple answer (a Yes or a No) and that’s what authors here are waiting for from the Envato team, I guess:
So, for Envato team it still makes sense, with ADP implemented and many tracks priced at $5, to reward those tracks and their respective authors with increased visibility on the top sellers chart and in search results, based on number of sales instead of generated revenue? It seems is what this topic is all about. Thanks a lot for your time!
As far as I remember we have discussed several ideas in this thread, so doing a little recap here:
-
Sort Top Sellers by revenue, lets just call the Popular files list Trending Stock Music as an example, best selling/trending stock music tracks could be sorted by how much they have earned the last week. Alternatively a mix between sales numbers and revenue, BUT this can complicate things, so it might be the easiest and most bullet proof approach to only sort by revenue.
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Search engine filter “Best Match” could be sorted by revenue and date published.
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Remove search by low/high-high/low and replace with Sort music prices <—$20 and $20—>. I have seen this on another stock music site, and the result is that when you search <—$20 a mix between different priced tracks show up. If customers absolutely want a $5 track or any other specific price range, they can search the price slider in the same way as they can do now.
If anything should be edited in this post let me know.
For details about the reasons why we believe these ideas would help customers find high quality tracks and reduce the gaming of the search system dramatically, read this post among others in this thread: Top Sellers Should Be Based On Revenue NOT Number Of Sales!
Dear @steve_lam I’ve heard rumours that you might be our best contact point to forward this information to the right people? 
We are requesting this as a experiment for AudioJungle/Music, other markets might not benefit in the same way with these ideas.
Thanks!
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+1 Dear Audiojungle Staff! Make the above minimum cost of one track from $20 (Problem will go away)
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+1
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