Posts by jhunger

I’m pretty sure that many of the top authors are just one person. As far as I know (barring any crazy Fight Club type scenarios) I’m just one person myself.

And it’s entirely possible to write, record, mix and master a stock music track in a matter of hours. In fact, it seems that when things just come together quickly it sometimes results in tunes that sell well, because you’re not over thinking things or adding too much, etc., or struggling to complete something that just isn’t working. Never done one in 20 minutes though – Mat is the master!

Cool thread, and I’m glad that collaborations are alive and well on AudioJungle!

Buzzkill alert – just one thing I should mention from collaborations that I’ve done, at least for US authors – us musicians may be above the financial aspects of it when there is art to be made, but you can bet that the IRS is not. So if it turns into something that brings in more than a few bucks (and on AudioJungle, anything is possible) you may want to consider how you’re going to be handling this in April.

I’m a co-collaborator on the SeaportSound profile here, and the way we’ve handled it is we split 50/50, and when tax time comes around I claim the entire amount as income on my Schedule C and then send the other author a 1099 for 50% of that. It would be more correct if it were an official partnership but we haven’t set that up yet, so at least this way we’re making sure that all income gets reported correctly.

Inevitable disclaimer – I’m not a tax authority so don’t believe anything I say . Except that you may want to do a bit of research on it to make sure it doesn’t cause problems down the line. And it may be a longer term situation than you think – case in point is that we haven’t posted anything to the SeaportSound account in a long time, but the sales rate is pretty much what it was when we left off.

TimofeyOstanin said
Nice thread Joel! I have one question… whether there is VST, better than from Wavesfactory ?

Hey Timofey! To tell you the truth I don’t know – I’ve never used a ukulele VST. I know there was a thread a few months ago about that, but I couldn’t find it just now. However, I’m pretty sure that the consensus was that the Wavesfactory VST was the best out there currently.

illuminations said
I love mic shootouts!! thanks JHunger for doing that. I think I like the Neumann the best followed by the akg. Surprisingly I thought the SM58 did a real decent job as well. You don’t get much of the “body” of the uke but I thought it captured a pretty workable sound. My least favorite was the little blondie. No low mids and the highs weren’t that clear to me. Of course, depending on the context of how it is being used it could still work in the right situation.

Cool, thanks for listening! I agree with the neumann and akg, and actually also the SM58 – it gave it some character that was missing with the others. The blondie… to be fair, the room I was recording in was not desirable in the least. It’s harder to hide that with an omni mic, I think. I should do this exercise again in a better room with a better uke, and also include some LDCs for more comparison – that might yield different results.

lion-audio said

Stuck_in_the_Basement said

lion-audio said
Hey Stuck in the Basement, I’m just trying out your ukulele technique on my very first uke track, since i seem to have the exact same setup (crappy room / Nt1a / crappy ukulele – not sure if yours is crappy, too). thanks for sharing, everybody!

Cool, let me know how that works for you! And yes, my Ukulele is pretty cheap. I did not know any better when I bought it, oh well… still works for the little use I make of it. By the way Ukulele experts, how often do you change the strings on these bad boys?

So my first Uke-Track went online yesterday. As mentioned before, I used stuck-in-the-basement´s identical setup, just instead of doubling the takes, i just copied them and moved one maybe 15ms for the spread. ah yes, and added some delay. thanks for all the useful info, guys. keep those threads coming! they are really precious!

I listened to it and I like it! Looks like you’ve gotten some early sales on it as well. The uke comes through nice, clear and powerful. I’ve never done the copy/delay trick you described – I should play around with that. Also I still need to change my strings .

TJMusic said
This thread is definitely useful one. I’ve just bought my first ukulele today After some practice, I’ll try to record it with my old Shure 16A mic – it’s a small condenser mic with very bright, sometimes too sharp sound. Worked nice with acoustic guitars, I suppose it may work out great with uke.

Nice! I’ve never tried a 16A, but it sounds similar to what I like for uke – nice bright SDC. Congratulations on the uke purchase!

TortoiseTree said
Those of you that have been here for more than a year probably remember that back in the day a lot of people talked a lot about “front page exposure” and “a track landing on a certain day” to maximize sales.

There was probably some truth to that when I started in 2009, but not for long as the track count started exploding. I think trying to game the system like that now is a fool’s errand, and an unnecessary source of stress.

TortoiseTree said
I mean, don’t get me wrong. I WAY prefer this situation of where older tracks are selling more consistently rather than trying to constantly upload to remain relevant. I was just wondering, has anyone else also experienced this change of how sales happens or is it the natural progression for authors here?

Maybe something has fundamentally changed, but I think that is the natural progression, actually. As you’ve been here longer and gather up more tracks and sales, you’ll get more exposure, and possibly repeat buyers that have already purchased one of your better selling tracks. If I were a buyer and had a successful project with one of your tracks, or had contact with you and you were good to work with, I would certainly see what else you had out there before I started looking for a track from an author I didn’t know.

I still have a core set of songs that seem to sell consistently, but even now I’ll get sales from relatively slow selling tunes that have been there for 3+ years, the old socks, as it were.

pinkzebra said
Last year July sales were down about 15-20% for me and, if I remember correctly, it was similarly down over much of the AJ marketplace.

Yep. July was down about that much for me, but June and August were pretty normal. Since I’ve been doing this (2013 will be my 4th full year) my best months are September to the first half of December, worst are second half of December to February, and then a dip in July.

Pretty damn impressive

I got one a couple of days ago as well – it’s like anti-Christmas! I don’t know if these are all because of buyer’s remorse – it may be that a charge was rejected at the bank for NSF or some other thing. Cost of doing business, I guess, though I do appreciate that Envato was paying the authors anyway in these cases in the past.

This might be the thread you were thinking of…