Audio recording "Vkontakte" will be paid
Mail.ru plans to introduce a number of paid features for listening to music on a social network
According to the Izvestia newspaper , the Mail.ru Group holding plans to introduce a paid subscription for audio recordings in 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 free of charge, however, based on the words of Alexander Blinov, general director of the Warner Music Group in Russia, Vkontakte will introduce a number of paid functions.
- Listen to the audio recording will be free of charge, but a number of new paid features will appear - for example, add an audio recording to yourself. If you like artists, you should support them. And musicians must earn to please you with new songs. In "VKontakte" it can be done at the price of a cup of coffee.
Apparently, the 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 favorite tracks in the "Audio recordings" section on their page. If the words of the general director of Warner Music do not diverge from reality, now holding your own "library" will be paid.
The cost of a “cup of coffee” is also a very blurred metric. Chances are good that Mail.ru along with the right holders will follow the path of Apple Music, where the subscription is made, for example, for a month and costs 169 rubles. The company also pushes the success of the services of its main competitor in runet to such a move - the Yandex.Music and Yandex.Radio audience (subscription price is 149 rubles) totals about 20 million people.
Now innovations are tested on individual applications. While the changes will not affect mobile platforms, and after the introduction of a subscription, audio will be returned to iOS apps, from which they were removed in 2014 due to Apple’s position on combating copyright infringement.
The rightholders and representatives of Mail.ru promise that the music in the VC can still be listened to for free, but, apparently, only through a search for specific songs. To access the playlists of a specific artist or for the opportunity to create your own list of preferred songs in 2017 you will have to pay.