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 didn't reflect well on her at all. 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 you should NOT buy a subscription to VK MUSIC.

Music in Russia has not been bought for a very long time. Durov himself even spoke about this. It has become a kind of tradition. As soon as the first Internet appeared, everyone immediately began to record music on dictaphones, CDs, anywhere, just not to pay. Music in terrible quality, with a low bitrate - all this was with us before Vkontakte. After the advent 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 on Vkontakte, and not on a disk, voice recorder 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 completely. Why buy music on disks if it is free on Vkontakte? And you don't even need to download it! Copyright holders began to complain even more. Sales have fallen and the main profit for everyone is the sale of merchandise and performances. After that, streaming services appeared, which allowed both performers to receive profit and users to listen to music online. Streaming services offered great quality for a reasonable price. But the quality in Vkontakte is still left from the time of 2010.

But now - for this quality they began to demand money. WE ARE LIKE EVERYTHING. But here are the analogs, obviously better. And this is the main mistake of Vkontakte.

Music uploaded by the user

Yes, that's how VKontakte works. VKontakte is in the same position as it was in 2010. All music is uploaded by users. And the social network itself plays the role of cloud storage. All music - downloaded without the permission of any artists. 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? That's exactly what it is. At the same time, in analogues, 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 by buying a subscription - you do not 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

Price like analogues

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

If you look at analogues that have been on the market for quite 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 that the artist himself uploads. You get track covers, a handy app, good quality music, lyrics for almost every track, and licensed music. Apple Music also has discounts for students, 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 artist. Paying for a subscription to Vkontakte - you support piracy in its purest form.

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, a 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 be 160 rubles. (Possible account suspension)

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

2. The quality of the music.

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

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

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

Spotify- 320 kb/s, in MP3 format.

In terms of music quality, 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 the 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 only signs contracts with different companies. But at the moment - all Vkontakte music is pirated.

In addition, there are a ton of remixes in the Vkontakte database, which pollutes the music database. As I wrote above, among the music - you find useless "BY VASYAN" remixes 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 still be consumed for free, however, based on the words of Alexander Blinov, CEO of Warner Music Group in Russia, Vkontakte will introduce a number of paid features.

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

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

The cost per “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 pushed to such a step by the success of the services of the main competitor in Runet - the audience of Yandex.Music and Yandex.Radio (subscription price is 149 rubles) has about 20 million people.

Now innovations are 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 combating copyright infringement.

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

The VKontakte social network will have new paid features for listening to audio recordings, and the music section itself will be completely rethought. This was stated by representatives of the largest music majors - the general director of Universal Music Group in Russia Dmitry Konnov, the general director of Warner Music Group in Russia Alexander Blinov and the general director of Sony Music Entertainment in Russia Arina Dmitrieva as part of a round table at the VKontakte festival.

You can listen to the audio recording for free, but there will be a number of new paid features - for example, add an audio recording to yourself. If you love performers, you should support them. And musicians have to earn money to please you with new songs. On VKontakte, this can be done at 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 just half an hour of listening, you need to increase and make large full-fledged playlists. But the artists should have a description, all his singles, breakdowns by albums, - commented Arina Dmitrieva.

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

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

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 would be equal to "the price of a cup of coffee." The subscription itself, apparently, will be implemented similarly to 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. For one of the most popular Russian streaming services, Yandex.Music, a monthly subscription costs 149 rubles. At the end of last year, streaming services themselves overtook regular music sales for the first time. As reported in a study by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), revenue from all streaming services in the world in 2015 grew by 29% and amounted to $2.4 billion.

Andrey Stebunov, head of the Yandex.Music business development group, said that over the past year, the audience of Yandex music services has grown 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 technology - recommender 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 ones, - Andrey Stebunov commented.

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

On July 15 of this year, Mail.Ru Group, United Music Agency (a partner of the holding 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 lawsuits (with two others, such agreements have also already been concluded).

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

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

Last quarter, for the first time, we made more money streaming than album downloads. An album costs an average of 99 rubles, and a subscription costs about 169 rubles, that is, for the cost of less than two albums, you can get access to all 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 to copyright holders. From October we will become the first Russian copyright holder - the curator of playlists in Apple Music. Naturally, we will promote our own audio recordings, but also add audio from other copyright holders to make the playlists popular with users. Probably, VKontakte will do the same story, with editors and curators.

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 fact that the changes affected the appearance and functionality of the section, a paid subscription appeared in the mobile version of the social network for saving audio recordings offline and listening to tracks without ads.

Listen for free, save for money

The function of saving music to the cache for later listening offline migrated to the Boom mobile application, which offers a fixed rate for 149 rubles. per month. Together with it, the 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. It also includes audio ads.

“You can still listen to music on VKontakte for free,” said Evgeny, a spokesman for VKontakte. He told Gazeta.Ru that Boom is an application of a social network partner, the United Media Agency (UMA).

In 2016, VKontakte and United Music Agency signed partnership agreements with the 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 offline listening to music cannot be free.

Krasnikov clarified that music caching, previously available for Android users, is disappearing, but the social network will save the list of 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 covers three social networks included in the holding at once: VKontakte, Odnoklassniki and My World.

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 relevant only for users of mobile applications, and a paid subscription is not required to listen to music through the web version on a computer. 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 introducing paid features, VKontakte tried to make the music section more practical and functional.

VKontakte brought together people with diverse 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 renewed 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 you are listening to at the top of the page, the list of audio recordings and the search for friends on the right side.

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

The “Recommendations” tab appeared in the section, 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 friends' updates in the news feed mode - the name of the audio recording and the time at which it was added.