Two important UI suggestions for AJ

While I appreciate all the wonderful things Envato and AudioJungle as offered to me and all the AJ authors throughout the years, there are couple of things that have bugged me a bit for quite a long time, and I’d love to see them fixed.

  1. the requirement to create watermark files manually is clunky system that should be done automatically at the server side. There are many AJ competitor sites that do this - you just upload the main wav files and everything is done for the author automatically. It feels sort of unbelievable that it is year 2017 and one of the biggest sites still requires such a repetitive manual work from the author side. Every time I start the AJ upload process I get the same “oh no, not this process again…” and I believe I am not the only one.

  2. the system for creating music packs is even more clunky - as the AudioJungle already has all of the required files for the pack, the UI should allow the creator to see a list of items that are not yet in music packs, grouped under categories and he would be able to click (with checkboxes) what items he’d like to put into the new pack and the system would automatically generate the description links to those items, their lengths etc. and also generate the music pack preview audio file based on this selection with right time codes in the generated description baseline. The idea that the author has to do all this himself manually is the biggest obstacle that seriously cuts the amount of music packs available.

I’d love to hear your ideas and support on these points and I’d really appreciate it if none of the answers would contain statements like “if you make the upload process too easy there will be too much competition on AJ”.

Please.

Bad UI is not the way to handle item volume.

6 Likes

Totally agree Driving! I have the same thoughts/desires, especially considering what the competition is doing. Regarding the watermark, I would think Envato would want it to be standardized via automated tools so that they don’t have such a wide variation presented to the customers.

1 Like

Full support for these improvements! It would also be great to have variations presented as separat files so that you can choose to play eg. «30 second version» without having to scroll through one, long continuous wave form. The main file would show up in search results and the variations would be listed at the item page.

2 Likes
  1. Do not agree. “Aj” allows you to adjust the watermark so that it does not spoil the atmosphere of the track and the buyer can assess the mood of the work without being distracted by the watermark.
    plus you can slightly change the watermark and it will be harder to remove from the track the “cheaters”.
  2. I agree. The system can easily create everything automatically, but it needs resources .
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Hmm. Well at least I think the 1. should be an option you can use if you want and decide for yourself if you want to do it manually or not. I would never feel like using the manual way to be honest.

2 Likes

This idea makes sense. We all want upgrades that simplify the work process. But if we consider the situation objectively:
1.I fully agree with EvgenM. We can customize the watermark for each track (volume, reverb or something else), make this “audiojungle woman” minimally distract attention from the music) In addition, dragging a file with a watermark into the project occurs in one click. I don’t think this is a grueling and monotonous process.
2.Creating a pack of course takes a little longer than adding a watermark), but it’s still pretty quick. Personally, I believe that I would be burdened by this process if I downloaded a lot of packs every month. We (the authors) think that Envato can change something at any time in the structure of the site, in the process of its work. But I think that in reality everything is not so simple.Envato is a large and complex mechanism, the proper work of which is provided by a whole team of specialists (and I don’t take into account the terabytes of new material for the reviewers every day). The introduction of something new into the work of the site is the time, money and human resources. There is nothing wrong with this if the result is really worth it. In this case, I’m not sure if this is a problem that “blinks red” and requires immediate correction.
But this is only my opinion.

1 Like

@anon65936426 I work as a backend programmer full time and believe me when I say that the amount of development required for either of these is quite minimal. Envato is million dollar business and there is no reason whatsoever not to do these kinds of UI improvements, especially when their most important competitors have already better uploading systems in place and have had for years.

Although the upload process is a clunky there are some advantages to the way it works. We have a lot of flexibility in being able to provide a file with multiple versions of each track for the buyers and control over the process. I’ve noticed with some rival sites that although the upload process is much quicker, you can’t easily provide (for example) the buyer with wav/MP3 alternatives or include an explanatory note about cue sheets or whatever.

Improving the process for making packs, however, would be a great idea. Any upfront investment needed to do this would more than pay for itself it by reducing the (considerable) time that must currently be spent by reviewers laboriously checking
every single submitted pack. That freed time could be used productively for many other things: e.g. curation, chasing down fraudulent accounts, maybe clearing out some of the older low quality tracks etc.

There is no reason that the automatic watermarking would prevent that - you’d just upload all the versions as wave files and the preview would put them in one block, based on the ordering of their alphabetical names and add watermarks.