Are some categories only available to the enhanced contributors?

[Keyser Susie]

Hello, I hope this is the right place for this question.

I’m trying to submit some images and video of a music box. I can see that other people have submitted similar material under the categories ‘Music Notes’ and ‘Other Musical Instruments’ (see attached image).

However neither of these categories seem to be available  to me from the drop down menu.

Are these categories only available to the enhanced contributors – or is there some way that I can access them?

If anyone can shed some light on this for me I’d be very grateful –I’ve spent so long editing this stuff , so I’d like to make sure that I get the metadata right.

Many thanks

[Nancy OShea]

Adobe Stock curates audio from trusted partners and agencies only.   Regular contributors cannot submit audio.  Likewise, your video cannot contain an audio track.  Sorry.

[Keyser Susie]

Thanks for your quick reply.

Don’t worry, I wasn’t planning to include audio, it’s just close up footage of the moving mechanism.

[Jill_C · Accepted solution]

If you use the search box at the top page "search this community" and search on the word "Categories" you'll find that the category isn't particularly relevant for Buyers who are searching for images. The title and keywords are far more important. I sort of remember reading here that at one point there were more categories and they were trimmed down to fewer.

[Keyser Susie]

Thank you so much, that’s really good to know, I won’t stress about categories from now on.

[RALPH_L]

When I do a buyers search for "music box", the first photo shown has the category "technology".

I do not believe it has any effect on the search. Maybe Adobe statistics.  

[Abambo]

The category is mostly irrelevant. Adobe does not use it with image search. As @Jill_C correctly states, at some point (I suppose after the takeover of Fotolia) Adobe cut down the number of categories. Old submissions, however, stay in their assigned category.

[MatHayward · Accepted solution]

In the years prior to Adobe Stock's existence, many millions of files were submitted via Fotolia (the agency that Adobe acquired to create Adobe Stock). In the early days of Fotolia, there was a very complex list of categories, followed by sub-categories and an even deeper level below that. It was a very time consuming endeavor for contributors to go through these menus and sub-menus to submit their content and the reward for the effort was virtually non-existent. As I understand it, customers rarely use categories for their primary search.So, after several years of that nonsense, the categories were significantly reduced to what you see as the options available today. This simplified the workflow and allowed contributors to spend more time focusing on keywords which is where the true influence is search is.

Since then, Adobe Sensei took over and started to recommend appropriate categories automatically. Sensei does a very good job of this, so in my personal workflow, I never change the category and I don't think this has any impact, positive or negative on my experience as a contributor. I recommend you do the same.

When you see a deeper, more specific category such as those you mentioned originally, it's a very likely indicator that the file is quite old. 

-Mat Hayward 

[Keyser Susie]

Thank you that sounds good advice, from now on I shall let Adobe chose the category and not worry about it.

And thank you to everyone who took the time to reply, I'm much reassured.