Are our music tracks and SFX being copied / used illegally

In a little over a year I have had 674 item page views and 514 artist page views with just 15 music tracks / edits and 5 SFX yet only one sale in all that time. To me this is highly suspicious as it would be so easy for people to play a file and copy it at the same time, then use it in their project free. Or especially with sound effects just alter the sound slightly and upload as their own work.

There is no protection against this, no watermarking or anything. I have been advised to join soundmouse who will actively search for illegal use but have not as yet joined. I just wondered if anyone else had similar suspicions. I just can't believe so many views and only one sale especially as the production is of a high standard and quality at a relatively low price, I'll add a track as an example.

When I mentioned this lack of watermarking (it changed a few years ago ... from "Pond5.com" every few seconds, to nothing) to a Pond5 person, telling them how easy it was to use loopback or even a line out to record the tracks, they did not even know what I was talking about.

It's really the easiest thing to steal, so thieves are having a field day with it.

Of course few if any of these miscreants are likely high-profile, so you'd be very lucky to chance into finding a track that was stolen. Higher-profile persons are more likely to have some honor and pay. I'm guessing.

Also, the views stats are corrupt. Pond5 has never figured out how to make sure that views are "real". In some cases it's obvious .. a video file has a spurt of views, for instance, and a sale, but then there are situation like you mention, with lots of views and no sales.

I'm surprised more people are not saying much about this to Pond5, I will message them but I feel it will fall on deaf ears. They are loosing revenue by allowing audio files to be taken at will, perhaps that's why they pay such a pittance 35% to music creators, they keep the lions share when an honest person buys a licence.

There isn't any real financial incentive on here to upload tracks, when they are so vulnerable to theft and the reward for licence sales is so low. Think the wise thing to do is just shop around for a better deal elsewhere.

Agreed. I let them know, in no uncertain terms, what I thought of them and their crappy 35% .... which was changed arbitrarily from 50% back in 2018, citing some kind of fantasy BS support and also happened to coincide with an almost complete lack of audio sales since then. Pretty low.