Posts by deeplink

Very sad. Great band. Saw them at London’s Hammersmith Odeon (Apollo). Excellent live.
Favourite tracks:
“Be Good Johnny” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImKPzEGCYZI&feature=related and
“Down By The Sea”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBoxECCK81w (turn ‘em up loud, with the ‘phones on…)

R.I.P. Greg Ham.

Good thread… really useful info based on personal experience. You can’t beat it! Thanks to SanctusAudio for the initial post

AlumoAudio said
Having had most of my music sold through some pretty major premium music licensing companies over the years, I was looking to expand my avenues and stumbled upon AJ purely by chance…

Nice idea, and I’m all for ‘spreading the business around’ as I said on another post on not just ranking tracks according to volume of sales.
The trouble with being ranked on ‘quality’ is that it’s very subjective, and how do you define it? AJ already approves tracks – or rejects them – based on technical quality of the recording, but also the personal tastes of the 20-35 year-old reviewers (I’m guessing the age group)... not necessarily originality or innovation, which probably has less chance of selling in this commercial marketplace

Soundroll says that buyers have the chance to browse and sort through tracks already, which is true, but corporate buyers probably don’t have the time. “Oh look – that one’s sold most and it sounds OK for what we want. Let’s just buy that upbeat-clappy-whistle Tim McMorris / Soundroll / Metrolightmusic / AudioQuattro track and get on with our project…”.

Although there is a little bit of division of the major categories, and the tagging option, maybe there could be more sub-categories and a more comprehensive search facility for buyers?
Example: A front page which asks buyers “What kind of music do you need?”, and then gives them more options to choose mood, instruments, vocals / instrumental, length, purpose of project (sales conference, product video, technical, western theme, oriental market, African location, etc.), and so on. Then the search result could well be a mix of top sellers and maybe even one of my tracks (zero-sellers!!)

It’s probably not going to happen, though, as probably too many people are happy with things the way they are. I wasn’t going to bother with any more posts, as I don’t think they make any difference, apart from the ones sharing support & resources between authors.

May as well just accept that the AJ service is run the way it is and take it or leave it.

gbiasillo said
ping c’mon chaps, be fair and like back

I think some of us are putting up band / business / organisation pages while others are doing personal pages on Facebook. There is a difference, and I’m keeping my work and personal contacts (family / friends) separate.
Are people adding each other as ‘favorites’ or just ‘liking’ an individual entry on the wall? I’m adding AJ authors / composers as ‘favorites’:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/GetThisMusic

Diesel_J said
Envato is a business. If I had a business like it, I would run it the same way if it ensured a steady increase in profit.
Two of us branched off and started our own fitness studio and within 7 months, we were earning as much as we did working for big box fitness facility. It’s akin to a city’s top chefs working for a restaurant they dislike not realizing they can run and operate one themselves that might blow away the competition.

Sure, I understand the situation and there are all kinds of pros and cons for staying with AJ, depending on whether you’re a top seller or not.

To take your example, if a few of AJ’s top sellers decided they were also strong enough to branch out alone or in competition, leave AJ and keep more money for themselves, AJ would suffer a big drop in income. Take out the ‘golden eggs’ (or the geese that laid them) and what do you have left under the current system? I haven’t counted the numbers in detail, but if 90% of your income is earned by 10% of your authors you’re very vulnerable if they decide to move on.

On the other hand, a large number of lower-selling authors/composers might decide it wasn’t a level playing field and quit AJ in big numbers. After all, you can only be patient for so long before you decide enough is enough and try other channels to market your stuff. Then AJ becomes even more financially dependent on the established big sellers they are left with. That may be fine in the short/medium term but if some other royalty-free music site gains a large number of composers and gets to be known as having the widest choice of music, AJ could lose out.

I’m sure AJ owners have thought all of this through with their business strategy, and the overall sense of ‘community’ seems good at the moment, but if I was a business owner in this changing and developing market, I would spread the risk and not spend all my marketing bucks promoting just a handful of top earners.

In another industry, I’ve seen companies get in serious trouble when their top salesmen / executives or engineers left and either worked for themselves or a competitor.

Let’s hope that sales for all of us grow to become more evenly spread in the future, based (of course) on our music being good enough to get buyers’ attention, rather than just because we’re permanently featured on the front page of the AJ site for 52 weeks of the year.

Doh! And there was me thinking that you followed an author if you liked their music and wanted to keep track of their new stuff. Didn’t know about the follow/unfollow trick. That must be why I’ve got all those followers, then. (All ten of them !) (Hey, you can follow / unfollow / re-follow / double follow / upside-down follow me anytime, guys… as long as y’all BUY something!!)


P.S. – I thought I’d better un-follow Tim McMorris. He doesn’t need any of us new authors following him…

Doh! And there was me thinking that you followed an author if you liked their music and wanted to keep track of their new stuff.
Didn’t know about the follow/unfollow trick.
That must be why I’ve got all those followers, then (All ten of them !)
(Hey, you can follow / unfollow / re-follow / double follow / upside-down follow me anytime, guys… as long as y’all BUY something!!)

Hi all,

Just a thought…
Would it be better for the majority of AJ composers if buyers were presented with music on an equal footing (a level playing field), and not persuaded just by how many sales a track had made?
If we didn’t display No. of Sales to buyers, but just to ourselves as authors & composers, buyers wouldn’t necessarily gravitate to the big sellers on numbers alone.
When you have menu items which say ‘top-selling authors / tracks’ or ‘most popular’, etc., for buyers to look at, why would they spend much time searching around? “I need something happy and motivational in a hurry for my business presentation… Hey look! Author X has sold 65 of those this week and is top of the list. It sounds OK, is the same price as those others with no sales, and I’m in a hurry, so I’ll buy it too.”

I guess if I was Soundroll, Tim McMorris and the other week-in-week-out ‘top ten’ authors, I might not agree, but for the rest of us it could spread the business around a bit more.

I’m probably whistling in the wind on this one, but thought it was worth saying.

Great job! Very useful.