How can they possibly clean up this mess?
The site was being flooded with (potentially stolen) tracks by new un-checked ‘authors’ whose items are being approved 20 times faster than established authors.
Oh, and they can’t explain why because the people who implemented it are sick today.
It’s hard to comprehend how much of a mistake this was.
Are you saying that because you aren’t aware that some users now have automatic updates based on their update acception rate or because you think they aren’t capable of making a programming error?
Yea I know, this is a collosal **** up of the highest order - if I was responsible for all this I think I would take a sick day
I wish this was just a theory but I just look at the evidence and chain of events - its fairly obvious what has happened
I saw a new author that got 15 tracks approved on the 5th and 6th of june ?? And 8 sales immediately ??
I’m pretty sure now it has to do with automatic approvals and testing with all the new accounts (that look somewhat similar). Maybe a testing mistake with showing all these items. Otherwise I can’t understand the fast reviewing and “lower” quality of the items.
Whole team got a virus…And now they are sick…
Fully support !!
I just don’t get why on earth you would test automatic approvals with new accounts. It boggles my mind so much that I think they must not have meant to do that. That’s of course assuming that is what they are doing but with the rate of approvals it certainly seems that way.
Whatever is going on it’s an epic mistake.
Exactomundo. It would make sense for Elite Authors, but not for new Authors and on top of that within 3 days… Ridicolous, it HAS to be a bug of some kind.
hope so, but too many coincidences… weekend, responsible people away and ‘sick’, new authors with prepared “items”… 
If this is a bug, it’s a really smart one.
I agree. Can’t be only a bug.
My profession is web developer / backend programmer and from my professional point of view this whole thing is totally unfathomable. I mean… One does not simply bring into production badly designed features that have not been clarified with the community or customers and then allow the feature to alienate most of the loyal community while allowing it to break the system and give edge to hackers and criminals. I’m sorry to say but this whole thing is straight from the Daily WTF. No excuses.
You talking about the automatic updates right?
When customers find out they have brought illegal music they are going to lose trust. In many cases it’s of the up most importance that what they use is legal. My old boss for example would only buy stock from one site even though he could get free photo’s from sites like unsplash - because a big company cannot get caught using illegal stuff.
This is so important. You’ll never stop people determined to get stuff for free but the whole point of market places like Envato is supposed to be that you can get a licence and know that you are using something legally (particularly if you are producing a product for a third party). If buyers lose trust in this then the whole business model ceases to work.
You can’t see the wood for the tree’s, already why I don’t buy from graphic river and photodune, I know there is good stuff there, I just can’t find it!
Exactly! There’s really good quality items available in all the market places but you have to wade through a sea of less good stuff to find it. A market depends on the quality of the customer experience and if it’s a struggle to find the good stuff sooner or later someone else will offer a better alternative.
I think it is fantastic if Envato wants to encourage and bring in new talented authors but the best way of doing this is to maintain high standards and to encourage actual talent. There’s no shortage of people out there who are capable of meeting the challenge!
This big time review cue screw up has brought the stolen music situation out in the open and now it really needs to be addressed because people should be seeing how bad it really is.
My post on stolen music posted about a week ago was censored, locked and hidden after being called “unwise” by the moderator. Now I feel vindicated as more of these posts relating to stolen music are coming out of the woodwork and more stolen files are being reported right and left.
Envato needs to start increasing security with ID verification and checking files against audio databases like Shazam and Audible Magic for matches to copyrighted music or watch their legitimate suppliers start walking out the door and heading to places with more integrity, higher licensing fees, and the ability to submit PRO registered music. This is quickly turning in to a disaster and I think it’s going to make some people wake up.
The theory is valid and make sense. I said that (in a silly mood) because it can be both real or a conspiracy scenario.
This “to be continue” situation is worthy of a Breaking Bad or GOT episode 
I think we messed here very different problems - new accounts, pirated music and review waiting time.
hi my friend , indeed the problem is not new and not only a matter in AJ indeed, this is true in all categories , the system indulges to let people “play the volume game” rather than pushing them to focus on quality . Besides, despite the more subsequent rejections in time, these poor / flat or quickly done items still manage to go through when some much better ones cannot make it without anyone manages to understand why … which is much of a problem indeed
besides there is much a more important problem again , in some categories, if u type something in the search engine,u end with items from 4 guys only and 18 results out of 30 from the same guy, incredible and ridiculous !
Or just respond when we tell them…
Hey All,
Firstly, a big thanks to everyone here for their patience. I mentioned yesterday that we’d come back to everyone today with some more information, so here’s where we’re at.
Firstly, the most important piece of information: we’re rolling back the change that’s caused the new authors to be disproportionately prioritised.
As everyone knows, there’s a lot of engineering work currently going into the review process. With so much work going on constantly, it was inevitable that there was going to be a trip up at some point.
Within the work that we were doing around queue prioritisation, we implemented a change too early and that’s what led to what you’ve seen. Ordinarily, this would have been rectified pretty quickly, but because we entered into a weekend and a few people were out sick the response time was longer than it should have been. Big apologies for this.
Firstly, a couple of clarifications:
The review queue is not strictly first-come, first-serve (nor has it ever been).
It’s important to be really honest about this, there are a whole range of different factors is play because items and authors are hugely different, and require different kinds of review. We prioritise based on value. We give priority to authors who have particular histories, Elite authors, and yes, sometimes to new authors. We also de-prioritise authors that have re-submitting the same item multiple times. This stems from a desire to improve the diversity of the marketplace and ensure our reviewers time is best spent.
Unfortunately, given the length of the queue, the change led to a disproportionate amount of new authors being moved the the front of the line, which shouldn’t have happened.
We don’t auto-approve any new item submissions.
The only auto-approval that occurs is for very particular authors who are submitting item updates. No initial submission of any item is auto-approved. New submissions always go through the review process.
Work in bringing the queues down will continue in earnest, and more changes (for the better) are on the way. The review team is currently in the process of onboarding a large number of new reviewers, who are working hard to get up to speed with our processes and bring the queues down. The past few weeks have also seen our team make a tonne of changes towards both behind the scenes and on the surface.
We’ll keep you all updated as we move ahead with major changes across different markets.