Envato, you shouldn’t treat authors that way. After all, without authors you wouldn’t have content.
Why is it that when someone works well for me, I think about how to add bonuses, more mney, gift for them, but not cheat? Am I too kind and naive? No, I’m just a normal person. Who doesn’t prey on others with deception, ignorance, and hypocrisy.
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As an exclusive author, I sell my works exclusively on Envato, but you want to sell them to third parties.
Do I understand correctly that we, the owners of exclusive accounts, will now be allowed to do the same by selling our works somewhere else?
Otherwise it would be unfair.
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In retrospect interesting that the “items for Envato” I had uploaded here were certain Envato tracks. So they were fundamentally different from my real productions. I intuitively never uploaded my “real” deep tracks here because that never seemed like the right place.
Intuiton is really a beast. It is not important to understand intuition, even if you are a thinker. It is important to always keep it well.
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I’ve been keeping up on this stuff as well. There is a lot of denial on the part of some musicians and quite a bit of deception by these licensing companies. I don’t know how much speaking up will mean, but I don’t want go down without a fight.
This hits me in four places, music, graphics and video (which was recently mentioned by Altman starting with GPT-5). I’ve got nowhere to go as even my day job doing fraud analysis is threatened.
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Our?!?!?! This is has been fun while it lasted.
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I was reading this discussion and I came up with a story, let me tell it:
Once upon a time, there was a farmer who came to the market to sell his grain. He made an agreement with the market owner, paid the rent and began to trade. One day, the market owner came to the farmer and said: “From now on, I will take any part of your grain and pay you as much as I consider necessary and when I consider it necessary, depending on how I negotiate with the buyer . And if you don’t agree, I give you time to leave here in peace.”
…
And they all lived happily ever after! 
(to be continued)
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Well folks, I just finished deleting my entire portfolio. I would cite all the reasons for this decision, but here are the main ones:
- The current stance from Envato regarding training AI models without our consent and not offering an opt-out option.
- The ridiculous lack of transparency regarding their so called “solutions,” when folks fought back… which were ONLY offered to audio and code authors, but read like a “trust me bro” answer to a legitimate concern with still no actual clarity, in writing or otherwise.
- The absolutely appalling way in which they admitted to having different rules for different marketplaces, basically saying that while they were willing to work with audio/music authors, video and graphics artists are just simply out of luck because “everybody else is doing it and that’s the way it is.”
- The extremely unfair timeframe they gave us to deal with this, given how something so impactful could effect the livelihoods of so many.
- The fact that some of us authors agreed to be exclusive to Envato and not offer our work on other marketplaces, yet Envato’s new terms state they can do this themselves now (offer our work to 3rd parties) and that details (compensation, etc.) are not forthcoming.
- This list goes on (and many of you here on this thread have brought up excellent points yourselves).
But I don’t want to end this message on an entirely sour note. Let me say that this community and my fellow artists whom I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with over the years have been the best part of my 11 year tenure at this marketplace. I have immense respect for so many of you, especially those who are also standing up to this nonsense. While it sucks to be losing a nice source of supplemental income, there is no way I could ever agree to such abhorrent terms from Envato. The good news is; as a result of Envato’s recent decisions, they have landed themselves square in the sights of some very influential legal organizations and movements already making waves in defense of artists around the world. Let’s just say things are going to get interesting in the coming months.
For those of you who have also taken a stand and walked away from this platform, I wish you all the best of luck in your future endeavors! As for anybody else who is sticking around… I wish you luck as well, because you’re probably going to need it.
Peace out!
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Hi there,
I just wanted to say that it was a pleasure to be a part of this great community for all these years.
Thank you Envato team and all the customers for such a great experience and the royalties that I earned during this time. 
I must admit, it was sad to remove all my items from AudioJungle, but it’s definitely time for me to move on.
Take care, guys, and best of luck! 
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well , no need to discuss vehemently indeed , I assume there must be a difference according to me categories , that’s it … I agree that deals are in all the platforms otherwise and that elements may not be the privileged one …
Just today I received a track from Premiumbeat subscription plan. Didn’t know they jumped into that model too. Also, and this might be subjetive, I felt their overall quality fell down quite a bit.
Anyway, 2 days till the new TCs. @BenLeong, could you tell us how to select the opt-out checkbox?
Cheers!
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In future, if we plan to begin using the items in those categories mentioned for these types of third party licensing arrangements, there will be an opt-out option.
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In future.
Meanwhile, you need the rights from authors now 
How about we opt in in future too, when we know what are we signing up for?
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Thx so much! So, please correct me if I’m wrong, in the present, we can be 100% sure Envato won’t use our assets to feed AI datasets nor start deals or distribute them through third party platforms. Am I right?
Sorry for beign a nag, but as the owner of my intelectual property, and having it registred in CID and PRO platforms I don’t like the idea of agreeing any change of contract without reading the precise monetary shares and the actual reach of the business plan.
Thanks again, as you understand any concrete info without “if” “in the future” “might” is crucial.
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I cannot emphasize this enough for anyone still sticking around:
Opting out AFTER your data has been ingested, does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING unless they remake the model
So all of you stay after June 1st? your work goes into the model, forever, until a new one is made. And even then, you will never know after that point if it is actually being retained or not. Not unless someone hauls them to court and forces a full disclosure of the entire “dataset”
That is how these models work. There is no middle ground, and the obscuring is intentional to hide public liability.
In fact, the incoming “opt-out” tickbox also means nothing unless you can actually prove they used that to not train. Which as stated: you will never know about. You will not see their trained library. There will be no proof.
So decide very carefully, because you cannot change your mind after June 1st- indefinitely
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Hey peeps.
Correct me if I happened to miss it, but I believe we were supposed to get information on Content ID stuff? I also do not think I saw a response for the exclusive issue. Since Envato is no longer exclusive, are authors who keep opt-in going no longer exclusive? Seems like it could be easy for Envato to bully exclusive authors, yet shell out their material to whomever they wish. Which is the exact opposite of the agreement exclusive authors made with Envato to begin with.
It was nice to see some other answers to questions given and the option for the opt-out, at least for some of us. As stated before from me, I’m less worried about AI training than I am the third party agreements. Mainly because neither Envato nor the yet unnamed third parties can actually give any details on compensation and licensing. As others have said, the “trust me bro” response is pretty ridiculous if you ask me.
Regardless of what happens with opt-outs or people leaving or staying, the results will still kill the Marketplace. Every day I still see aggressive marketing towards Elements and away from the Marketplace. The Marketplace is no longer a focus for Envato and this deal shows that. Sure, we can get our items selling on third party sites for an undisclosed (shady) compensation fee, but realistically, that would be like my income from Spotify. Next to nothing. Pennies. So I don’t see still how any of this deal will actually benefit an artist here. It will benefit Envato greatly as they will keep making their cut and push Elements to the moon.
Unfortunately, for many of us who call the Marketplace home, we will just have to deal with dwindling sales and the least amount of promotion for our items, portfolios and Marketplaces. Regardless of opting out of things or keeping things as they are, we have little choice outside of leaving. Especially with just a few days left on this mandate. Pennies from third parties won’t compensate for much realistically, regardless of what we are told.
I wish Envato still had emphasis and the will to support their Marketplace and authors over a subscription service. I’m not against a sub service, hell I pay for Elements to use in my own videos, but to have it be the only thing that is promoted is unfair. And once this new deal goes through, they will be looking to promote outside collaborations and Elements. The Marketplace will be left in the dust to fend for itself.
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Hi @Derek_Palmer_Music. I mentioned that we were working on some Content ID questions earlier in the thread, but those were bumped back down our priority list as we’ve since confirmed there are no plans to use Audio in any kind of third party distribution or usage at this stage.
If that position changes in future, two things will need to happen before that can take place: we’ll need to contact Audio authors to provide the opt-out method described earlier, and we’ll also need to provide more information on how Content ID registered tracks would be affected (which would be influenced by whatever any future distribution method looked like).
@WormwoodMusic I hope that addresses your question too.
On the questions about exclusivity, as covered in a previous update this does not change. You can choose to allow Envato to exclusively distribute your items (earning a higher rate on Envato Market sites), or you can have a non-exclusive account where you distribute your own content on other sites.
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hi , I am sorry but I do not understand anything about your message … which categories are u talking about pls? it looks like that this is supposed to start in the next two days for several categories, including graphics … is there going to be an opt out option for this category for example and when , pls?
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My understanding had always been that we were in effect selling our items direct to the buyer and Envato simply acted as third party providing a platform for this to happen. The seller and buyer both pay a fee for this service.
‘Distributing our items’ seems to imply a completely different contractual relationship and looks very odd in the context of the existing pricing arrangement with buyers and sellers fees, with the seller being wholly responsible for any sales tax, copyright issues etc.
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Changes are definitely needed. On P5 a third party partnerships was established long time ago. Once i received payment from Global Market Earnings and it was 2 times higher share than from a normal sale. This only happened once. How it will be with Envato, only time will tell. Hope we will see higher share. Bad side of 3rd party, that an author dont know who made a purchase and when he will be compensated. Updated policy allows compensation after 100+ years from purchase.
About AI. I believe this will not help with sales, in long term it will do opposite - decrease sales. AI will train only once, this mean 1 time share ( about 1 usd per 20 items) from 1 AI model. From another point of view - there are AI that used images all over internet without permission. Probably the same will be with music. Like it or not, AI is with us forever.