Should I keep uploading?

Sinar said
probably luck comes to those who are desperate to wait))

If the library continues to grow (which it will) and the numbers increase (they are)... I think the question should really be WHAT do we upload… not why.

To the dismay of Audio Jungle, it is unfortunately no longer an Author’s best interest to upload their best work. Yes AJ, you can continue to tell your Authors that this is what you want; but it’s no longer sustainable (and slightly patronizing). If we continue to do this, we lose as authors. If we’re producing quality work for front page exposure, and fast food like sales, again, we lose.

As the landscape of the market has shifted, so will the content. I’m a firm believer that AJ is a wonderful outlet, inspiring community, and ultimately just a great thing. I can’t stress this enough. However, AJ has something to offer it’s authors beyond that of just a stock library.

I think it’s easy to forget how horrifying the user interfaces are of 99% of anything on the internet related to Sound.. most stock sites look like they were created in the 80’s, and the user experience is just as bad. So what’s my point? Audio Jungle is a STUNNING platform for creative artists to use today. One of the reasons I can’t leave AJ is because of their commitment to providing a great user experience for their buyers, but also… my clients! Audio Jungle gives authors a platform to share with clients. If you aren’t sharing your portfolio with people, good luck making a living!

ZtarrZound said

Sinar said
probably luck comes to those who are desperate to wait))

I think anyone who doesn’t acknowledge that luck does/has played at least a decent part in being largely successful here (be it the time they joined or having a track be a part of an awesome VH production helping to balloon exposure) is fooling themselves.

To a certain degree, luck governs almost everything in this world. Realistically, it is a shear numbers game. For every successful composer, there has to be at least 20 unsuccessful ones. Unfortunately, that success is a little bit more random in the creative arts than in other occupations, because music isn’t measurable. What sounds like garbage to one person might sound like a symphony to another, and vice versa…and that’s even if you can get people to listen your music, which in itself can be a difficult thing. We live in an age of attention spans measured in the microsecond; if your music can’t grab someone in five seconds or less, they aren’t going to listen to the rest of it. There’s just too much going on all the time.

digitallush said
If the library continues to grow (which it will) and the numbers increase (they are)... I think the question should really be WHAT do we upload… not why. To the dismay of Audio Jungle, it is unfortunately no longer an Author’s best interest to upload their best work. Yes AJ, you can continue to tell your Authors that this is what you want; but it’s no longer sustainable (and slightly patronizing). If we continue to do this, we lose as authors. If we’re producing quality work for front page exposure, and fast food like sales, again, we lose.

And +1 adam.

rtofvnt said
Here we go again with some frustrations.

First of all SkyProductions – what make’s you think everyone should have the same sales ? Whole world running on the fact THERE IS A COMPETITION . Flowers blooming with more colors than other to attract more bees. Some monkeys in forests spend more time looking for food and fight other animals to survive. Some people investing what they earn to education to have better future, some people just smoking and drinking. Some people has been in the right place and right time and has this spark creativity and worked on that to perfection and uploaded their music to AJ and been lucky there were a customer who needed he’s music and they bought it. And spread word about that in right places. You can’t blame them for that. Just because few kids died of hunger in Africa do I have to do the same ? Music taste is veeery subjective.

Another thing – AJ marketplace is a market. If you’ve got huuuuuge market with 100 000s products and you don’t have time to browse because you looking for the best product – you will look at the things that other people bought. Time is money. That’s why more than 60% of whole AJ sales happen from top 50 maybe 100 tunes (this is just my guess).

To answer your question – yes – stop uploading. Go to different market places. You know the golden rule of every business: don’t try to make more than 50% of your income from one source. I’m not working anymore on music for AJ – is to crowded – it’s like … I don’t know – try to sell potatoes on potato market. You can try to sell bananas, but bananas buyers don’t shows on potato market. I start concentrated more on themeforest – this is great place – go to latest templates and look at the sales most recently added things – there is maybe handful that HASN ’T BEEN SOLD . Of course if you treat all this “business” very serious.

PS. small allegory to this potato market. I think AJ could actually do something actually about all this potatoes – some of them getting rotten and its time to clean up and prepare some space for fresh potatoes I can get rid of some of them from my portfolio.

I agree with your last paragraph. If AJ only had quality material then customers wouldn’t have to resort by searching by “Sales” all the time. In fact I agree with everything you said except your first statement. When did I say everyone should have the same sales? Please point it out to me. You are just glancing at what I wrote and making your own assumptions of what I said.

This is the bottom line. I upload a track. It sells for a month. After a month its never heard again by anyone.

Now does this mean my music is garbage? Very possibly. But then why does my files sell at ALL then? Why do they sell ONLY in that first months time? I have about 230 sales, so 230 coincidences?

Ok. Pretend your a music supervisor or any regular Joe making a youtube video. Joe needs a pop track for his awesome footage of whatever. He goes to music and clicks on the “Pop” category.(you can do this your self if you don’t believe me) AJ has it set by default to search all Pop track by Date. Joe listens to the first 8 tracks and they all either suck or are not what he is looking for. Then he searches by “Sales”. 50 tracks of AJ’s “Best” material. He doesn’t have to go anywhere else. He buys one that already has 137 sales. These are all high quality tracks. I’m not saying there not.

Next time Joe comes to AJ he will bypass the search by Date and go strait to searching by “Sales”.

Now personally, the only chance I (SkyProductions) have of making a sale with Joe is if I JUST uploaded a track and it was on the first 8 tracks he listened to. But because I don’t load up to Pop EVERY SINGLE DAY I ’m clearly out of luck. I have some great pop tracks that are 4 months old but because of these reasons he will never, ever hear them. This applies to the search engine as well.

Now lets say I uploaded a great “Pop” track at the exact time 25 brand new AJ customers are looking for one and I miraculously sell 25 sales of that new pop track I just uploaded…THEN and only then will that track be purchased after the first month because now that pop track has the 25 sales to get more sales by the people who will inevitable be searching by “Sales”. But this is HIGHLY unlikely, agreed?

Top authors do not have this problem, obviously they have enough sales to get more sales.

As far as my RF portfolio here with AJ is concerned I will only be uploading for that first month of sales. From my short time here it seems to me that building up my portfolio is meaningless if only the tracks that I just uploaded sell. I could have 2000 great tracks in my portfolio but only the last 10 will be selling.

Until the day that one of those tracks get a decent amount of sales. And that is only achieved by luck.

Some of you I notice are buying your own tracks tracks because you feel that is the only way to get out of this Catch 22 cycle.

You know who you are and I know who some of you are, and I betcha even AJ knows who you are. But why would AJ care if they are making money off of you trying to get out of this rut? So I guess its fine, keep doing it. I will however not be doing that, its degrading. Tim Mcmorris said he had a custom project where he told the client to buy an item of his 50 times instead of paying Tim directly with cash. ??? So I’m pulling in $900 for a short film I’m doing this week. Can I tell the producer to “buy” a corporate track 64 times?

Its quite possible that top authors are going to come in this thread with a handful of reasons that suggest different ways that customers search. And that only their talent is the reason for their success. But 90% of the time this is how customers search. They search by sales. How do I know? Because when I’m composing a film and I don’t have any “Jazz” music for a scene at a Jazz club, this is exactly what I do. Because I don’t have time to scour 50 subpar Jazz tracks in order to get to the one good one. What do I do when I’m searching for a track at another library? Easy. Type in Jazz or search by Jazz category and listen to about 20 tracks, and without a doubt I’ll find it because most of the tracks are quality. Of course this varies library by library for instance Pond5 is worse than AJ in this regard. Revo is joke.

I have a semi-close friend that composed “The Journey Trailer” for “The Dark Knight Rises” through one of the top trailer libraries. He told me he would never take the time to upload to AJ because, “they favor the tracks that are already established.”

From AJ’s perspective they would get a whole slew of talented composers if they changed this model of only getting sales during the first month and only giving sales to the people with sales.

Stop accepting so much garbage and make AJ a library of quality tracks by giving the talent incentive to start uploading and continue to upload. I’ve sold a certain track 144 times through another library and certain track has sold 0 times here. It is a corporate track. But its been on AJ for 5 months.

Oh and Rob I joined here mid November. So no, like I said I’ve been here 9 months. Wait…Ok 1 week less than 9 months…so ALMOST 9 months

SkyProductions said
Some of you I notice are buying your own tracks tracks because you feel that is the only way to get out of this Catch 22 cycle.

You’re kidding right? Seriously, please stop doing that whoever it is, this industry is struggling enough without having composers paying for their own work in royalty-free libraries!

tacoMusic said

SkyProductions said
Some of you I notice are buying your own tracks tracks because you feel that is the only way to get out of this Catch 22 cycle.

You’re kidding right? Seriously, please stop doing that whoever it is, this industry is struggling enough without having composers paying for their own work in royalty-free libraries!

+1… it’s like shill bidding on eBay (bidding on your own item to raise the price)!

I’ve only been here on audiojungle for a couple of months, but I think I can already see that most of what Skyproductions has pointed out here is true. My new tracks sell for some time and then, as the pageviews for the tracks drop drastically, they stop selling. So it really is a struggle of visibility here and the name “AudioJUNGLE” is more than fitting – we composers are like plants in the jungle which compete for the sunlight of the clients. And at the bottom of the jungle it can get really dark as all the massive trees block all the sunlight.. So, “Welcome to the Jungle..”

I’m not really complaining tho. I understand it is a competition here and I have a massive respect for all the top authors. I do think tho, that Audiojungle could do “forest managing” to put its immense library in better use, and to ultimately, make more money. Maybe there could be a section here, where audiojungle staff can promote audiojungle’s hidden gems – tracks with obvious quality, but which for whatever reason haven’t really sold that well. This kind of a “semi-featured” list shouldn’t of course be too long, but it could still contain more songs than the weekly featured song. The list could and should also be renewed like every month with new gems and the songs that get “too many sells” to be “a hidden gem” anymore could be replaced with new tracks. I think there has to be many clients here who would want to find something fresh and fitting for their project that hasn’t already got like 5000 sells, but they are just too exhausted to find anything fresh, high-class material from this jungle.

Anyways, just a few thoughts from the noobie

SkyProductions said

I agree with your last paragraph. If AJ only had quality material then customers wouldn’t have to resort by searching by “Sales” all the time. In fact I agree with everything you said except your first statement. When did I say everyone should have the same sales? Please point it out to me. You are just glancing at what I wrote and making your own assumptions of what I said.

This is the bottom line. I upload a track. It sells for a month. After a month its never heard again by anyone.

Now does this mean my music is garbage? Very possibly. But then why does my files sell at ALL then? Why do they sell ONLY in that first months time? I have about 230 sales, so 230 coincidences?

Ok. Pretend your a music supervisor or any regular Joe making a youtube video. Joe needs a pop track for his awesome footage of whatever. He goes to music and clicks on the “Pop” category.(you can do this your self if you don’t believe me) AJ has it set by default to search all Pop track by Date. Joe listens to the first 8 tracks and they all either suck or are not what he is looking for. Then he searches by “Sales”. 50 tracks of AJ’s “Best” material. He doesn’t have to go anywhere else. He buys one that already has 137 sales. These are all high quality tracks. I’m not saying there not.

Next time Joe comes to AJ he will bypass the search by Date and go strait to searching by “Sales”.

Now personally, the only chance I (SkyProductions) have of making a sale with Joe is if I JUST uploaded a track and it was on the first 8 tracks he listened to. But because I don’t load up to Pop EVERY SINGLE DAY I ’m clearly out of luck. I have some great pop tracks that are 4 months old but because of these reasons he will never, ever hear them. This applies to the search engine as well.

Now lets say I uploaded a great “Pop” track at the exact time 25 brand new AJ customers are looking for one and I miraculously sell 25 sales of that new pop track I just uploaded…THEN and only then will that track be purchased after the first month because now that pop track has the 25 sales to get more sales by the people who will inevitable be searching by “Sales”. But this is HIGHLY unlikely, agreed?

Top authors do not have this problem, obviously they have enough sales to get more sales.

As far as my RF portfolio here with AJ is concerned I will only be uploading for that first month of sales. From my short time here it seems to me that building up my portfolio is meaningless if only the tracks that I just uploaded sell. I could have 2000 great tracks in my portfolio but only the last 10 will be selling.

Until the day that one of those tracks get a decent amount of sales. And that is only achieved by luck.

Some of you I notice are buying your own tracks tracks because you feel that is the only way to get out of this Catch 22 cycle.

You know who you are and I know who some of you are, and I betcha even AJ knows who you are. But why would AJ care if they are making money off of you trying to get out of this rut? So I guess its fine, keep doing it. I will however not be doing that, its degrading. Tim Mcmorris said he had a custom project where he told the client to buy an item of his 50 times instead of paying Tim directly with cash. ??? So I’m pulling in $900 for a short film I’m doing this week. Can I tell the producer to “buy” a corporate track 64 times?

Its quite possible that top authors are going to come in this thread with a handful of reasons that suggest different ways that customers search. And that only their talent is the reason for their success. But 90% of the time this is how customers search. They search by sales. How do I know? Because when I’m composing a film and I don’t have any “Jazz” music for a scene at a Jazz club, this is exactly what I do. Because I don’t have time to scour 50 subpar Jazz tracks in order to get to the one good one. What do I do when I’m searching for a track at another library? Easy. Type in Jazz or search by Jazz category and listen to about 20 tracks, and without a doubt I’ll find it because most of the tracks are quality. Of course this varies library by library for instance Pond5 is worse than AJ in this regard. Revo is joke.

I have a semi-close friend that composed “The Journey Trailer” for “The Dark Knight Rises” through one of the top trailer libraries. He told me he would never take the time to upload to AJ because, “they favor the tracks that are already established.”

From AJ’s perspective they would get a whole slew of talented composers if they changed this model of only getting sales during the first month and only giving sales to the people with sales.

Stop accepting so much garbage and make AJ a library of quality tracks by giving the talent incentive to start uploading and continue to upload. I’ve sold a certain track 144 times through another library and certain track has sold 0 times here. It is a corporate track. But its been on AJ for 5 months.