Hunting for licensed content: getting music

    Hi Geektimes. On May 1, amendments to the anti-piracy law No. 187-FZ entered into force in the Russian Federation . Now the court has the right to block not only resources with illegal video products, but also with music, texts and software - after the appeal of the copyright holder himself, of course. That is, almost any type of content (except photographs) now falls under the law. And besides - and this change is the most important - if the same site again violates the copyright of the same plaintiff, the resource will be blocked indefinitely as a punishment . As you can see, everything is really serious. As an educational program, this is how this law is implemented in practice now:





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    After the copyright holder appeals to the court and confirms the fact of posting illegal content, Roskomnadzor immediately turns to the site owner with a request to remove it; if after that within three days the content is not deleted, the authorities will contact the hoster. If the hoster does not take measures, then the appeal will follow to the provider (which is unlikely to go against the court order). Blocking a page with content (or the entire site - depending on the situation) will last 15 days, during which the owner of the resource can file a counterclaim. And yes, it will still be required to remove the content.

    Not only trackers and warezers, but also musical search engines, aggregators, as well as Vkontakte, beloved by the people, may be hit by a toughened law. Something will go to foreign servers (which, however, will not hinder blocking access to them from the Russian Federation), something will go to where "ICQ" and "modem" are now, something will be reprofiled or (as now "Odnoklassniki" ) license uploaded content. And, most likely, few will go the last way.

    Thus, the relevance of the question of where you can get the content legally, stands up to its full height. In addition, the massive use of pirated content in our country is developed not so much because of greed or lack of funds, but because of the reluctance to spend time and nerves getting licensed games, music and films. If convenient platforms with legal content are accessible to users, then without any anti-piracy law they will be in demand. And fortunately, there are such platforms in RuNet.

    In our article, we will consider where, at a distance of a couple of clicks and without unnecessary trouble, you can listen to music protected by copyright for free or for reasonable money. We’ll make a reservation right away - we’ll focus only on the largest resources that have Russian-language interfaces.

    Lastfm


    The first, perhaps, is to consider the good old LastFM .



    Yes, yes, LastFM. Now, of course, it is no longer as popular as it was before, and it seems to be used more as a database of information about groups and artists and as a community of music lovers than as a radio station and content storage. However, there really are a lot of free tracks downloaded by the musicians themselves. It is convenient to familiarize yourself with, so to speak, the best of any group, especially if you are used to paying for music, but do not want to take a pig in a poke. However, using LastFM just for this does not make sense at all - it is good just as a single set of various functions for the small joys of a music lover, in particular scrobbling and the selection of related artists based on it.

    And for listening to music online, and not only in the format of a random radio, but as you like, one of the best resources in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet is the Yandex.Music service.

    Yandex.Music




    Yandex.Music- Not a search aggregator (which just might be under the blow of an updated anti-piracy law), but a repository of music sorted by artist and album. Completely licensed, just in case, note. Currently, there are about 18 million tracks here - more than enough if you are, of course, not a fan of some, for example, a very little-known dark folk like Werra or Rose Rovine E Amanti there. There is an opportunity to collect personal playlists, listen to mixes of radio, there is a system of recommendations (based on the songs you listen to and your profiles on Facebook and VK - it’s true, however, it is not clear how NM manages to detect them). In short, functions abundantly. There is not only the ability to pump tracks onto your hard drive - however, with such a completely free set of functions, there is nothing surprising here. By the way, keep in mindthe mobile application rips off a monthly fee of 169 rubles per month, but it can cache tracks for listening offline. You can also listen to your music, but for this you need to put Yandex.Disk.

    The closest competitor and analogue of Yandex.Music is from abroad - it is a cloud player Google Music , integrated into Google Play. True, it is already paid.

    Google play music




    Everything is the same here - millions of licensed tracks (including many free ones), radio, recommendations. But there are quite significant differences. First of all, you can upload your own tracks to the cloud (as many as 50 thousand) and listen to them without restrictions on your smartphone or through the web interface. And no one will ask where you got them initially :) In addition, the music presented in the system can already be downloaded to your own media. True, for this you need to buy it separately as Google Play products. But still, there is such an opportunity for those who prefer to keep the music offline. Everything else in Google Music, you can transfer the library from iTunes for free (we will talk about iTunes itself later).

    Of the minuses, we can note a completely dull system of breaking down music by genre (as well as a often strange genre definition - for example, the last In Flames album here is designated as progressive metal), a banal selection of recommendations, and a shortage of Russian-language tracks (compared to the same Yandex .Music).

    Unlimited use of Google Music costs 189 rubles per month; There is a 30-day trial period for review. Pretty democratic, considering what a wealth of music and convenient functions for the money are offered. So, if you are not one of those who with horror is waiting for the capture of the world by Google, feel free to open Google Music and arrange a trial month.

    The next object of our attention is Deezer , an analogue of the Spotify service (not available in Russia).

    Deezer




    The main advantage of Deezer is that it is easy to handle like a hammer. At the top there is a random radio based on the tracks you listen to (Flow), below are individual recommendations, on the side on a fixed panel there is a search form, profile data and player. Really comfortable and nothing more. And it looks stylish.

    The amount of music here is almost two times higher than in the same Yandex.Music - after all, foreign origin affects 35 million tracks. In addition, there is an extensive database of lyrics.

    Deezer is free for computers and tablets, but a paid subscription (199 rubles per month + a free trial period of 30 days) provides many good features - the ability to cache tracks for listening offline, import MP3s from your device, and also removes ads and improves sound quality. And yes, it allows you to use all this splendor on your phone - without a paid subscription, only Flow and mixes will be available to you. By the way, there are virtual gift cards here - useful if you want to drag your friends into Deezer.

    The Russian response to Deezer and related sites is Zvooq .

    Zvooq




    The emphasis in Zwooq is placed on randomly generated mixes (“waves”) and on thematic music collections from the portal’s editors and other users. Collections of jazz, music "on the road", "This day in the history of music" and so on - all this is quite interesting. Well, just listening to specific artists, of course, is also possible (as well as buying and downloading individual tracks and albums to your computer, as in Google Music). True, Zvooq cannot boast of a normal interface and navigation - everything is too piled up and some functions are difficult to find intuitively. The portal also slows down when scrolling pages. This, of course, is a big minus, but I hope that the resource will improve.

    Zvooq is free, but the functionality of the free subscription is such that you will probably get the paid version without hesitation if you like the service. In addition to the availability of advertising, rewinding tracks is not available in the free “Sound”, and you can switch them no more than 6 times per hour. A month of subscription costs 149 rubles in the web interface and 169 in the application for smartphones. You can also pay immediately half a year (799 rubles) and the year of subscription (1499 rubles). A paid subscription, by the way, will allow you to download tracks to the phone (but only to the phone - to download them to a computer, as already mentioned, you will have to buy for a fee).

    There is a popular iTunes service for apple users , with which they are all more or less familiar: at least you won’t fill music with a new iPhone without it.

    iTunes




    There is nothing free in iTunes (at least for our region - in the USA not so long ago the Free On iTunes section with a number of free tracks and TV shows became available) - this is a store in its purest form. But the prices here are quite humane (adapted specifically for the Russian market) - the cost per track does not exceed 15 rubles. This time. And two - the total amount of music available on iTunes recently exceeded as many as 43 million songs! What is nice, while Russian-language music (the quality of which as a whole will be left out of the discussion) is abundant here. Recommendations, playlists and other standard joys of such services - everything is in place in iTunes. There is also a feature in the form of virtual gift cards, like Deezer has.

    Of the minuses, it’s traditionally "apple" with an incompatible format for encoding tracks, in this case AAC (although not so long ago iTunes nevertheless learned to convert music to mass formats, and players on other platforms more or less learned to play AAC). In addition, the program has a rather inconvenient interface - you definitely have to get used to it. Although those who have been with iTunes for a long time are used to and do not understand what the problem is, it is still difficult for beginners to figure it out. Of the pluses - it is available both on apple smartphones and on apple computers .

    What else


    Of course, the above is not limited to. There is a crowdfunding platform with free donations for Kroogi musicians , there are Internet radio stations piter.fm and moskva.fm with archives of free songs that were broadcast (it’s a pity, the player with “air rewind” was broken), there are YouTube channels with licensed clips in highres (one VEVO is worth it). And if you consider resources without a Russian interface, then one article is not enough - you can immediately mention Spotify , and Jango , and Stereomood , and 8tracksand many many others. And, most likely, due to the tightening of anti-piracy law, in the near future we will witness the expansion of this market in RuNet, which will lead to the emergence of new streaming services and music repositories. In the meantime, we study and master the existing ones. Do you know more interesting services? Write in the comments.

    That's all for today, to be continued. Next time we’ll tell you where it’s better to hunt for movies and TV shows.

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