Yeah, I know. It’s a bit tough for those who were here when it was a cooperative and friendly community. Hate talking like a grampa but well… it is what it is. Cheers! 
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lol well , in case u did not get it, other people’s strategy impact u , whether u like it or not and u seem to forget about something indeed, here , this is that this is a worldwide community in the first place. So what “is working” for some people actually is because of poverty in these concerned countries and u can do whatever u like but u’ll never be able to “compete” with them (in case this is the attention , i say that as i have never seen this place as a competition one, personally …). In addition the thing of cheap work and low price is the kind of system that will lead people into being replaced by machines and robots, which will ultimately kill art in the end , as this is uniform tastes out of being confronted with BS … if u believe , for instance that people naturally like minimalistic in design , u are dreaming, they are taught to, which is a completely different story and no doubt why these trends are pushed , this is because once people have identified this as a standard, the door will be opened for us to be replaced by automated services
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Devaluation of the market as a whole, a positive and attractive image “homeless”, model of devaluation of items (music), or working for a pittance! Humiliation of yourself as an author! It completely destroys the word “music business”!
In general, a decrease in income for the author!
Something like this! 
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Okay, in a conclusion means that:
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We can’t do anything against price dumping
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price dumpers provide very often good quality work
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Customers looking more and more for a lower price - the difference in qualitiy is hardly recognizable anymore
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high priced music provides then no added value to the customers
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Envato cannot or do not want do anything against price dumping (because of law restrictions and so far…)
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Envato has a safe business for themself
At this point I ask myself, why I’m spending so much time to for creating good music. Under this circumstances has no one the opportunity to sell the music for a reasonable price and get a good outcome. This market is nearly dead.
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Now we have the choice: We leave all of our community sense and lower all our prices - then there would be no price-tag-difference between price dumpers and normal pricers. All items well be visible under the “New under 7$” and other nonsense categories and yes, the customer has more effort to search and find.
or -
We hope for better days, we hope, that the customers will recognize the real value of quality music and go for a real valuated price. But honestly, this will never happen, I guess…
Seems to be the only chance to get a bit of this cookie if I step in in this game and do the same sh*t as the others and dump my prices to hell.
I’m frustrated, I admit.
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You might be right in most of your points, yet:
Well, maybe not quite. We can at least set our prices at reasonable numbers and stand. I’ve seen subcategories and niches following the trend of higher pirced tracks as they find out that others are selling as well as them at a value twenty times higher. Of course that wouldn’t work on templated corporate tracks made by dozens in the hour so personally I don’t waste my time on that genre.
Also, we can rant, haha. It’s still free
Well, there are exceptions to this.
Hell they do.
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In fact, I miss the days when Envato changed the lives of all my friends who make music around me 
You know, we could spend hours talking with my friend @OddVision on the phone and discussing Audiojungle trends, new ideas. Now we are discussing what to do next? haha
We are very lucky to have started our work on Envato at the best of times.
There were a lot of cool stories, both good and bad (about cool companies who bought your music, haters :D, cool new authors).
You know, when stagnation begins, and after that everything falls, you understand that the problems of old times were not so bad, they made the system move forward.
Envato is still alive, but it doesn’t change people’s lives anymore.
But no one promised us this!
I’m sorry!
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Yeah, I miss those days too.
Totally offtopic story: actually Envato was a huge lifeboat and a gamechanger for me back in the days. The very same year I started uploading tracks to AJ (Dec. 2015) I lost my dayjob at an audio production house and, until Elements appeared in the late 2018s if I’m not mistaken, it became my main source of income in a year or so. I was pretty seriously considering reducing my freelance jobs to the minimum and focus in stock music but then the whole subscription thing came up.
Now it’s pretty much the exact opposite for me: I try to compose some stuff when I’m free and focus once again in freelance projects. Obviously, being an exclusive author in AJ is no longer a safe move unless you’re invited to join the Elements club, and personally I wouldn’t rely on that either in the long run.
Anyway, sorry for all the whining and nostalgia. I still love this place and don’t plan to stop uploading whenever I have the time to do so. It’s just the wine talking. 
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I also remember a meetup that took place in Moscow in the summer of 2018.
It was great to feel like a part of a cool team and to see happy and hopeful people who changed their lives with the help AudioJungle.
My income at that time showed stable growth.
I could not even imagine that in a few months the leadership of Envato will launch Elements and everything will go to the abyss.
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Same thing!
It was a crazy day!
Everyone was full of hopes and ideas haha
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Fun fact: They are no longer accepting music authors. Try to apply for being an author on Elements, the music category is gone from application.
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Yeah, I noticed. Also, they blocked non-Elements author’s access to all Elements forums, where customers were constantly asking where the music from Video and After Effects templates could be purchased (keep in mind that Envato removes all links from Elements to the Markets) and some of us were helping them to find those tracks. Nice one.
EDIT: @BenLeong just wrote me to let me know that now all customers questions regarding track authors and stuff like that are directed here and are accessible to everyone just as usual. My bad! Still, why don’t simply allow a link to AJ… 
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as for me, i feel sad that most of the decisions that had been made were of no help for authors in a general way (in particular the move to USA) and that they rather resulted in a good deal of trouble and that there was nothing being made to help people during this amazingly awful time where sales are a mess due to the down economy. Counter clockwise, elements is still being much pushed and people are still not free to join if they want to, thus increasing the discrepancy between people. I also think that some authors, especially in AJ should realize how ridiculous this hunt that some authors requested against people with several accounts turns out to be at the moment, as regard to how all marketplaces are impacted by the pandemic consequences on the economy
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Great words, dude. And, unfortunately, this describes what is happening to me now. “It was cool, but it’s time to move on.”
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It seems to me that many authors have the same situation)
Thank you so much for your comment!
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No, bro, it’s all right, you have nothing to do with it (you said your opinion and that’s ok ). I’m just using common sense and facts “as a foundation”! The truth is born in discussion.
Good luck to you!
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Few years ago in my hometown a guy opened new pizza place and set the prices like 30%-40% cheaper than what was the price of an average pizza at the time. Very soon he got the visit from at least 3-4 other pizza place owners who didn’t like what he was starting. They were not rude (I hope), but convinced him not to do so.
Pizza prices stayed almost the same all around the city, and people still eat pizza like crazy. They are still competing and trying to get an advantage on each other but with things like: original pizza ideas, more quality ingredients, delivery options, promotions and menus etc… Much better than simply lowering the price to an extreme and using bad ingredients.
And it’s even more prominent in case of AudioJungle because a low priced audio doesn’t necessarily has to be of bad quality. If you’re selling for low prices you’re destroying my chances, and if I decide to sell low I destroy your chances, and ultimately we’ll have a marketplace that won’t be worth our time.
I had 30 items here from 2014-2015, deleted them and moved them somewhere else rather than selling them low. They were low quality standard for what’s needed here today. That’s how you need to think before you sell cheap something you have worked hard for. Also, I live in Croatia where I can do much more with 1$ than someone from US, Germany, Norway, UK etc… So I could set my price 7$, earn 5$ from that and buy myself: 1 bread, 1 0.5l cola, 1 coffee at the café, 1 milk, 3 apples. (all that for around 5$ and be happy, but I’d rather set my prices 29$ music piece, 19$ intro for my exclusive (39$, 29$ for my non-exclusive) and buy myself a lot more, while still not sabotaging people from the countries like the ones I’ve mentioned before
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That’s a nice pizza story and also true. And a really known thing in most countries. And trust me, the competitors can be very persuasive. The problem is that this is not a problem that we can manage ourselves. Besides the fact that would be pretty much illegal, we are dealing with online, virtual competitors. Anyone is a hero behind the anonymity of their avatars. keyboard warriors. This is not a fair fight we’re dealing with. We are not a united authors syndicate ( although that would not be quite a bad idea, to be honest ). The only authority that can do something is Envato. So maybe if we care enough about our pity income, we might convince some people out there. Elements Is closed for us. RIP. At least, do not let the market the place where customers come to buy 5 buck music, because is cheap.
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Envato is a big player and we are their staff.
In the real world, there are trade union to resolve problems between employers and workers.
But we don’t even have a contract, we can simply be told that you can look for another place if you do not like something.
Maybe this is right.
it’s just hard to realize that maybe you were deceived when somebody pretend that we are all a community.
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Since 2006 they have been pretending to be like a community! 
Ahahaha. No comment!
How long have the authors been “staff” of Envato?
I have not been given the status of a moderator even for my useful work for 3 years on the forum (they promised but not given)!
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