The social network "VKontakte" for the first time in ten years has carried out a large-scale update of the "Music" section. In addition to the changes affecting the appearance and functionality of the section, a paid subscription to save audio recordings offline and listen to tracks without ads appeared in the mobile version of the social network.

Listen for free, save for money

The function of saving music to the cache for later listening outside the network has migrated to the Boom mobile application, which offers a fixed rate for 149 rubles. per month. Together with it, an Android or iOS user gets unlimited access to tracks, and also gets rid of audio ads.

Boom also has a free plan - it allows you to save up to an hour of music, but it only works for the first 90 days. In addition, there are audio ads in it.

“You can still listen to music on VKontakte for free,” emphasized VKontakte press secretary Yevgeny. He told Gazeta.Ru that Boom is an application of the social network's partner, United Media Agency (UMA).

In 2016, VKontakte and United Music Agency signed partnership agreements with leading international copyright holders of music products Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Merlin Network and others. It is reported that the integration of Boom into the system for listening to audio recordings on the social network occurred at the request of copyright holders, who said that listening to music offline could not be free.

Krasnikov clarified that the caching of music, previously available to Android users, is disappearing, but the social network will save the list of the tracks themselves in such playlists so that users do not lose it. They can be listened to when connected to the Internet.

The Boom application was created by United Media Agency together with, so that the paid subscription applies to three social networks of the holding at once: VKontakte, Odnoklassniki and Moy Mir.

The press service of Odnoklassniki confirmed to Gazeta.Ru that from today the social network allows you to listen to music without the Internet through a subscription in the Boom application. "Free listening to music online remains completely OK: both in the web version and in our mobile applications - in this case, the copyright holders will receive royalties from advertising," the press service of the social network said.

Odnoklassniki also announced their plans to update the Music section this year.

At the moment Boom is only relevant for users of mobile applications, and to listen to music via the web version on a computer, a paid subscription is not required. As for third-party applications that offer to save music on VKontakte for free, the necessary measures were already taken by the social network in December 2016 - then VKontakte disabled the ability to search for audio recordings through the program interface (API).

Musical consultations

In addition to the introduction of paid functions, VKontakte tried to make the section with music more practical and functional.

VKontakte has united people with various musical preferences, gave them the opportunity to communicate, create thematic communities, search for rare tracks and distribute their favorite music without restrictions. Music is an important part of the life of VKontakte users. Today we are launching a completely updated service and starting a new stage of its development, ”said the managing director of VKontakte.

Updated section "Music" in "VKontakte" // Press service of the social network

The design of the “My Music” tab is similar to the previous version of the section and includes the same elements: the track to listen to at the top of the page, the list of audio recordings and the search by friends on the right side.

The center now has quick access to playlists, which can now be shared on the wall or in private messages.

The section now has a tab "Recommendations", which combines several services at once: a "smart" system of personal recommendations from "VKontakte", which takes into account the user's musical tastes, friends' music, a list of new tracks and albums, as well as community playlists.

In addition, now the user can see the updates of friends in the news feed mode - the name of the audio recording and the time at which it was added.

Representatives of the social network VKontakte announced that they would have to pay for the music.

To develop a model for monetizing audio recordings, the company hired the National Music Publishing House (NMI). Eizvestia reports that a special agreement has been entered into for this. The publishing house has catalogs where more than 50 thousand pieces of music by musicians from Russia are recorded, as well as 400 thousand songs by foreign artists. VKontakte legalizes these audio files. Fortunately for the social network, but unfortunately for users, legalization will find many songs that are not included in the NMI catalogs.

It seems that VKontakte is tired of paying compensation to labels for violation of copyright and related rights. We are happy for the company and the fact that it began to pay more attention to the rights of performers, but not all users of the social network will be able to understand why they need to pay for what was previously free. In other words, we believe that VKontakte can lose many users after the closure of free access to audio recordings.

New paid functions for listening to audio recordings will appear on the VKontakte social network, while the music section itself will be completely rethought. This was announced by representatives of the largest music majors - General Director of Universal Music Group in Russia Dmitry Konnov, General Director of Warner Music Group in Russia Alexander Blinov and General Director of Sony Music Entertainment in Russia Arina Dmitrieva within the framework of a round table at the VKontakte festival.

You can listen to the audio recording for free, but a number of new paid features will appear - for example, add an audio recording to yourself. If you love performers, you have to support them. And musicians should earn money to delight you with new songs. On VKontakte it will be possible to do it for the price of a cup of coffee, - said Alexander Blinov.

- VKontakte is the only place on the Internet where music is closely related to social interaction, people share playlists, send songs to each other. But now you can attach only 10 audio recordings, and this is only half an hour of listening, you need to enlarge and make large full-fledged playlists. But the artists should have a description, all his singles, breakdowns by album, - commented Arina Dmitrieva.

It is not known exactly when the new features will appear, but the music copyright holders promise before the end of this year.

We will test various monetization opportunities in cooperation with our major partners, ”the VKontakte press service said.

The press service of "VKontakte" also explained that testing will be carried out on a separate application (where there will be only music), there will be no changes in mobile applications yet.

As for the cost of subscriptions - all three representatives of the majors said that it will be equal to the "price of a cup of coffee." The subscription itself, most likely, will be implemented by analogy with Apple Music and can be issued for a month, providing access to advanced features.

Now in Russia a subscription to Apple Music is 169 rubles per month. In April of this year, it was reported that more than 13 million people bought a subscription to the service, and in January the number of Russian users amounted to 300 thousand people. One of the most popular Russian streaming services, Yandex.Music, has a monthly subscription of 149 rubles. The streaming services themselves surpassed regular music sales for the first time last year. According to a study by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), revenue from all streaming services in the world in 2015 grew by 29% to $ 2.4 billion.

Andrey Stebunov, head of the business development group of Yandex.Musy, said that over the past year the audience of Yandex music services has grown by one and a half times, now the monthly audience of Yandex.Music and Yandex.Radio services is more than 20 million users. In his opinion, users appreciate good sound quality and convenience, so they are gradually abandoning pirated sites and services, choosing legal music applications.

People increasingly prefer to listen to music through services without downloading it to their devices. Many people like manufacturability - recommendation technologies have learned to take into account the tastes of each listener and select music based on personal preferences. It looks like magic, but it works: the listener puts his likes and dislikes, and the technology takes into account his tastes and helps to listen to his favorite music and discover new, - commented Andrey Stebunov.

Music will also return to iOS apps on the social network, when - also not specified. In February 2014, Apple removed the VK App from its store. The corporation is actively fighting piracy, therefore, in order to return to the store, the social network had to remove the section with audio recordings from the iPhone and iPad applications.

On July 15 this year, Mail.Ru Group, United Music Agency (the holding's partner for interaction with copyright holders) signed an agreement with the third major copyright holder - Universal Music Group (previously signed with two other Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment), and the social network VKontakte »Signed a settlement agreement with Universal Music Group to settle unresolved legal claims (with two others such agreements have already been concluded).

The press service of Mail.Ru Group reported that the concluded agreements provide access to licensed content of the world's leading record companies for users of all social networks included in the holding. That is, payments for audio recordings can be entered not only in VKontakte, but also in the social networks Odnoklassniki and My World. Details of how much the subscription will cost and what features will be paid are not disclosed yet.

Karina Abrahamyan, Public Relations Director of FGUP Melodiya Firm, said that people stopped buying albums and started buying subscriptions to music services, since they are much cheaper. She believes that promoting music playlists, as implemented by the popular Western services Spotify and Apple Music, is the most obvious step for the development of the music direction on the social network.

In the last quarter, for the first time, we made more money from streaming than from downloading albums. An album costs an average of 99 rubles, and a subscription is about 169 rubles, that is, for less than two albums, you can get access to all the music in general. Apple Music is actively developing, users are already ready for the subscription model, - Karina Abrahamyan comments. - Playlists that are listened to by millions are popular with users (because there is a lot of different music) and bring good income for copyright holders. From October, we will become the first Russian copyright holder - curator of playlists in Apple Music. Naturally, we will promote our audio recordings, but also add audio from other copyright holders to make the playlists popular with users. Probably VKontakte will make the same story, with editors and curators.

The VKontakte company decided to make money on the music that users themselves upload. But it turned out ... So so. The article will help you decide whether it is worth paying money for a subscription, or is it better to go to other services.

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Not so long ago, the popular social network Vkontakte introduced a fee of 150 rubles for the full use of its music. Which affected her badly in general. I believe that this streaming service has no right to take money for this and now I will try to explain my point of view and make it clear why it is NOT worth buying a subscription to VK MUSIC.

Music has not been bought in Russia for a very long time. Durov himself even spoke about this. This has developed into a kind of tradition. As soon as the first Internet appeared, everyone immediately began to record music on dictaphones, disks, anywhere, just not to pay. Music in terrible quality, with a low bit rate - all this was with us before Vkontakte. After the appearance of Vkontakte, music finally began to normalize. The quality is not the best, but at least some. The average bitrate of Vkontakte is 258 kb / s. And so, when everyone started uploading music to Vkontakte, and not to a disk, dictaphone or anywhere else, the copyright holders began to complain. Discs are no longer needed, cassettes have lost popularity, and it makes no sense to record music on a dictaphone anymore. After the advent of smartphones, the meaning of disks disappeared altogether. Why buy music on disks if it's free on Vkontakte? And you don't even need to download! The copyright holders started to complain even more. Sales have dropped and everyone's main profit is from selling merchandise and performing. After that, streaming services appeared, which allowed both performers to make a profit, and users to listen to music online. The streaming services offered excellent quality at a fair price. But the quality on Vkontakte still remains from the days of 2010.

But now - for this quality they began to demand money. WE LIKE ALL. But analogs are clearly better. And this is the main mistake of Vkontakte.

The music is uploaded by the user

Yes, this is how VKontakte works. VKontakte is in the same position as in 2010. All music is uploaded by users. And the social network itself is the role of cloud storage. All music - downloaded without permission of any artist. It is uploaded by users. Yes, the social network has signed several contracts, but at the moment, the money is not paid to the performers, and pirated music is still there. How strange, we pay for pirated music? This is exactly what it is. At the same time, in analogs, for example, in Apple Music - most of the amount goes to the performer, and not to the company, as is now happening on Vkontakte. This is a serious problem. Because when you buy a subscription, you don't support the artist. It's the same as continuing to download pirated music, but paying to download it. In addition to all this, you pay for the fact that you yourself uploaded it there.

Quality remained in 2010

The price is the same as that of analogues

Yes, indeed, 150 rubles is not that much. Every student can afford this price, but is it necessary?

If you look at the analogs that have been on the market for a long time, you will notice that the same Apple Music and Google Music offer much more for exactly the same price. And at the same time, you will get good quality music, which is downloaded by the artist himself. You get covers for tracks, a convenient application, good quality music, lyrics for almost every track and licensed music. There are also discounts for students in Apple Music, a subscription for students will cost you 75 rubles / month. Hah, do you need VKontakte music after that? Do not know. At the same time, by paying for a subscription to similar services, you support the performer. By paying for a subscription on Vkontakte, you support pure piracy.

1. First, the price. The price of Vkontakte is almost the same as that of all streaming services, but there are fewer opportunities, and the quality is worse.

Google music- 159 rubles per month.

Apple Music- 169 rubles per month. If you are a student, the subscription will cost you 75 rubles per month.

Yandex.Music- 169 rubles per month.

Spotify- 570 rubles per month. You can cheat and buy a subscription through the countries of Malaysia and the price will turn out to be 160 rubles. (Account blocking is possible)

As you can see, of course, Vkontakte wins in price, the difference is not great, only 20 rubles. But considering the student subscription that comes with Apple Music for the student, Apple Music is the best choice for the high school student.

2. The quality of the music.

Google music- 320 kb / s, in MP3 format.

Apple Music- 256 kbps AAC. (256 kbps AAC = 320 kbps MP3)

Yandex.Music- 320 kb / s, in MP3 format.

Spotify- 320 kb / s, in MP3 format.

In terms of the quality of music, all services are already bypassing VKontakte. Vkontakte for the same price offers a range of music from 92 kb / s to 320 kb / s. Is Vkontakte worth its money? No.

4. Base of licensed music.

Google music- 30 million tracks.

Apple Music- 43 million tracks.

Yandex.Music- 17 million tracks.

Spotify- 30 million tracks.

Alas, there is no licensed music on Vkontakte. At the moment, Vkontakte is only signing contracts with various companies. But at the moment - all Vkontakte music is pirated.

In addition, there is a ton of remixes in the Vkontakte database, which pollutes the music base. As I wrote above, among the music - you find remixes of "BY VASYAN" that nobody needs and music that has the wrong name. Wrong covers, or music with no covers at all.

According to Izvestia, the Mail.ru Group holding plans to introduce a paid subscription for audio recordings on the Vkontakte social network by the end of this year.

The reason for this step was the company's efforts to legalize music content on the social network and the signing of a number of agreements with major foreign and domestic labels.

The music content itself can also be consumed for free, however, based on the words of the general director of Warner Music Group in Russia, Alexander Blinov, Vkontakte will introduce a number of paid functions.

- You can listen to the audio recording for free, but a number of new paid features will appear - for example, add an audio recording to yourself. If you love performers, you have to support them. And musicians should earn money to delight you with new songs. On VKontakte it will be possible to do this for the price of a cup of coffee.

Apparently, monetization will affect, first of all, the main functionality of Vkontakte as a music service: a lot of people create their own playlists and collect a collection of their favorite tracks in the Audio Recordings section of their page. If the words of the General Director of Warner Music do not disagree with reality, then now keeping your own "music library" will be paid.

The cost of a "cup of coffee" is also a very vague metric. It is highly likely that Mail.ru, together with the copyright holders, will follow the path of Apple Music, where a subscription is issued, for example, for a month and costs 169 rubles. The company is also prompted to take this step by the success of the services of its main competitor in Runet - the audience of Yandex.Music and Yandex.Radio (the subscription price is 149 rubles) is about 20 million people.

The innovations are now being tested on individual applications. While the changes will not affect mobile platforms, and after the introduction of a subscription, audio recordings will return to iOS applications, from which they were removed back in 2014 due to Apple's position on fighting copyright infringement.

The copyright holders and representatives of Mail.ru promise that it will still be possible to listen to music in VK for free, but, most likely, only through the search for specific songs. You will have to pay to access the playlists of a specific artist or to create your own list of preferred songs in 2017.