What's happening with the music on VKontakte. “VKontakte is going to hell”: users are outraged by paid music listening on the social network. What happened to VK audio recordings

The Russian people are showing natural ingenuity in this situation - songs of the most odious and most popular performers from those who were deleted from VKontakte are now being re-uploaded to the network with the most unexpected titles

what happened Since about Friday, representatives of music labels have been subjecting users of the VKontakte network to carpet bombing: tens and hundreds of thousands of people receive notifications about the removal of a particular song at the request of copyright holders; in the case when it comes to " big three» majors (Sony, Universal and Warner), letters signed by lawyer Elena Trusova, messages also come from foreign independent labels - for example, representatives of the Beggars Group, which includes 4AD, Rough Trade and others. Strange incidents also happen - in some places it looks like the administration of VKontakte is playing it safe: for example, the songs of Lyapis Trubetskoy and Oksimiron, the copyright holders of which are the authors themselves, were blocked and then unblocked either at the request of the musicians, or by themselves. The users themselves, whose playlists were affected, react to what is happening differently - some sign a petition against the “anti-piracy” law (which was adopted by the State Duma in the first reading just today), others build conspiracy theories that everything that is happening is somehow connected with attempts to criminally prosecute Pavel Durov, others re-upload everything back, converting the tags to Cyrillic and designating Lana Del Rey as a Bath without Doors, and David Guetta as a DJ from the area. How this will all end is still unclear; most likely, the copyright holders will somehow come to an agreement with VKontakte - otherwise, an extremely interesting socio-cultural experiment may result: millions of users who are accustomed to listening and discussing music on VKontakte will be left without the products of large labels and will be forced to switch their focus on independent artists.

Afisha asked all interested parties about what was happening.

Dmitry Konnov

Head of the Russian branch of Universal Music

“Our patience is over. VKontakte is inseparable from music, and the site’s owners have mastered the monetization of their audience. Tens of millions of advertising revenues would not be possible without the content that the audience follows on VKontakte. The fact that the patience of the major players ran out almost simultaneously is easy to explain - even such piracy havens as India and China show more than convincing growth figures for the legal music market, not to mention Brazil. Only here the market has been falling for the fourth year in a row by at least 20 percent per year. The reason is that everything is free and nearby. Just click.

“Our market has been falling for the fourth year in a row by at least 20 percent per year. The reason is that everything is free and nearby.”

We are for the user not to feel any changes - we only demand that VKontakte start paying for content. Statistics say that 90% of VKontakte users listen to music. It would be a shame for us to lose this audience, and we could offer them a lot. We hope that common sense will help VK become legal and more successful. By the way, if any of the content owners wants to make it free - please!

No one warned anyone about our actions. But we are ready to sit down at the negotiating table and come to an agreement. Agree quickly and to the point. The goal of our action is to legalize the content of VKontakte. And if you look further, then obtaining funds for the development of local projects - we once said that it is piracy on social networks that hinders the development of Russian music.”

Georgy Lobushkin

press secretary of VKontakte

“Here it is important to note the main fact: compositions are deleted by copyright holders, not VKontakte.” Moreover, as practice has shown, claims arise not from the authors of the works themselves, but from those who are trying to make money from their work. Majors lobby for the adoption of laws that they themselves write. Unfortunately, VKontakte is forced to comply. We have always complied with our obligations under the DMCA in good faith. But we will also direct our efforts to ensure that independent musicians, those who are not afraid to freely distribute their creativity, do not feel disadvantaged by the destructive activities of large record labels and imperfect laws. That's all we have to say for now."

Elena Trusova

lawyer, partner at Goltsblat BLP

"On at the moment I am not authorized to answer press questions at the direction of clients, but I can confirm that Goltsblat BLP represents the interests of Sony, Universal and Warner, who have sent claims regarding violation of their rights to use phonograms to the VKontakte website. I cannot name the start date of cooperation, but you yourself understand that this is not done in a couple of days. The VKontakte website itself is responsible for sending messages to users, of course, not me personally. If I have the opportunity to comment on the situation, I will do so - I have something to say about your questions."

Oksimiron

musician

“They started deleting my tracks, all the rights to which I had. “Tumbler”, for example, all rights to it belong to me and Porcha (Oksimiron’s beatmaker. - Note ed.), that is, no one could make any claims. For me, there is reputational damage in this - I have always been against such things and I do not want to give the impression of a person who demands that his music be withdrawn from public access. It’s still not entirely clear how this happened, maybe someone snitched, but in any case, the technical support service responded very quickly - there are no complaints in this regard. And in general, I’m not going to fight with VKontakte, that would be naive. It's not about me at all. My situation is simply very symptomatic: this is not the first time they have tried to protect my music, although I did not ask for it. The copyright legislation currently existing in Russia does not protect performers like me; it rather even hinders them. And if he protects someone, then their relationship with the intermediaries and with the listeners is their own business. I don’t need intermediaries and defenders, I communicate well with listeners directly and allow them to advertise me by sending each other tracks and posting them wherever they want.

I wrote that I was looking for a lawyer, yes. Nowadays, the needs of independent musicians without contracts and without labels are not given any attention at all. I don’t get involved in the affairs of the majors - I just don’t want anyone trying to protect me against my will. It's obvious system error, and you can try to do something with it.

The song “Tumbler”, which they tried to remove from VKontakte

I suspect that at this point most musicians simply haven't thought about copyright issues. They will not be ready for VKontakte to become a pirate republic. They believe that by supporting this kind of repression against users, they will be able to make some profit. So, I think, if such a republic arises, then everything will be limited to the songs of extremely unknown musicians - and everyone else will hope that the law will protect them, or simply will not think about it. I don’t know singer Victoria Daineko, but from what I’ve read, it seems to me that this is not a well-thought-out position, but what is called a gut reaction - something was forbidden to her, she left. And in another situation, she could just as actively advocate for strengthening copyright legislation. Don't delude yourself about such people. Although, on the other hand, maybe I’m just not very familiar with the work of Victoria Daineko.”

“It’s hard to say when it started. The VKontakte administration began receiving complaints from copyright holders a long time ago. There were also examples of the removal of the new Placebo album and many others. To be honest, I don’t remember anymore. There was also a stir around the funny story of the removal of Sergei Lazarev’s music. That is, such a protection mechanism for copyright holders was provided for a long time ago. But now their activity has increased, apparently in connection with the upcoming “anti-piracy” laws that will be adopted in the Russian Federation.

It all happens like this. First, you receive a letter stating that a complaint has been received from the copyright holder about the audio recording you downloaded, and you are recommended to delete it. The label itself cannot remove it - it can only complain, but the administration of VK deletes it. The support service also reports that there is a possibility of account blocking if you are caught doing such things too often.

“Everyone understands that sooner or later they will have to start paying for music, as they do in the civilized world”

There are rumors that after a number of attempts to discredit the head of VK and the resource itself (the story of child porn and the assault on a traffic police inspector), it is now controlled by people related to the Kremlin. One way or another, the upcoming copyright laws are related to the activity of labels. Such a large resource as VKontakte simply cannot ignore the legislation. Everyone understands that sooner or later they will have to start paying for music, as they do in the civilized world. Therefore, there should be no claims against copyright holders who have a financial interest, or resources that will be forced to comply with the rules of the game and laws. Claims can only be made against musicians who, by signing to major labels, find themselves in bondage - and as a result, the bulk of the funds goes not to them, but to money-bag intermediaries.

What will we do next? There are many options. You can completely refuse to publish music that is protected by copyright, or find loopholes by posting it on other resources. Or maybe we’ll only publish posts with music from independent musicians - there’s a lot of it, and it’s in no way inferior to music from major labels.”

“Of course, sooner or later this was to be expected, but I don’t see any trouble here at all. And I don’t believe that major labels will be able to remove their artists from VKontakte: maybe under other tags or under other names, but they will all remain there and will not go anywhere. The trouble will come if the problem is solved in a simple way, simply by closing the corresponding section, but I don’t believe in this even more. This whole situation seems artificial and exaggerated; We didn’t feel anything at all, no changes.

Even if we imagine that all famous artists will be removed from the network, I don’t think that this will have any impact on public sites like Motherland. Before such pages appeared, people searched for obscure music, for example through Last.fm. Now it’s easier for them to just subscribe to us, and they no longer have to look for anything anywhere. And the number of such people has almost no influence on the “cutting out” of popular groups. Although it is certainly pleasant to believe that VKontakte will become a “DIY republic” - a place where amateur and independent music flourishes.

And if we talk about me as a listener, then all this did not affect me at all: my “Straw Raccoons” and “Beacons” are still with me.”

The Mail.Ru Group company has introduced restrictions for listening to audio recordings in mobile applications for the social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki. It will be possible to listen to music for free only 60 minutes a day, the innovation was explained by the conditions of the copyright holders. The restriction outraged social media users, to which they responded with memes.

Background listening to music in the VKontakte and Odnoklassniki mobile applications, as well as the Boom music application, has become limited since October 1. This was reported to TJ by representatives of the United Media Agency, which acts as an intermediary between copyright holders and the owner of social networks, the Mail holding company. Ru Group.

Listen to audio recordings for free background It will be possible for 60 minutes a day, in the future they plan to lower the bar to 30 minutes. To get unlimited access to audio recordings, you need to subscribe for 149 rubles per month.

The restrictions affected only mobile applications, in the web version of VKontakte you can listen to music unlimitedly with advertising between audio recordings, which was introduced in April. If you pay for a subscription, audio can be played without advertising.

The new time limit for listening to songs is related to the requirements of copyright holders, explained the United Media Agency, which cooperates with music giants Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Merlin Network.

The press service of Odnoklassniki stated that paid subscription was originally specified in the Mail agreement. Ru Group with copyright holders.

A paid subscription is an opportunity for musicians to receive a stable income from publishing their content in OK.

Press service of Odnoklassniki.

At the same time, music in the web version of Odnoklassniki remains free for now. The restriction on listening to audio recordings in mobile applications will be introduced gradually, VKontakte press secretary Evgeniy Krasnikov clarified in a conversation with vc.ru.

The innovation on VKontakte has outraged users of the social network; they criticize the management and say that everything has gotten worse.

- Captain Blatt (@Vladoooos410) October 1, 2017

Many draw memes, traditionally demand the return of the site’s founder, Pavel Durov, and yearn for the times when music was without restrictions.

At the end of September, VKontakte released the largest update to its mobile application in three years. In the new design, the familiar side menu has been moved to the bottom of the screen. The “Prometheus” function has also started working, which generates recommendations in news feed user.

The social network VKontakte will have new paid functions for listening to audio recordings, and the music section itself will be completely rethought. This was stated 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 during a round table at the VKontakte festival.

You can listen to the audio recording for free, but a number of new paid functions will appear - for example, adding an audio recording to yourself. If you love performers, you should support them. And musicians must earn money in order to delight you with new songs. On VKontakte this can be done for the price of a cup of coffee,” said Alexander Blinov.

- “VKontakte” is the only place on the Internet where music is closely connected with 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 increase it and make large, full-fledged playlists. But artists should have a description, all their singles, album breakdowns,” commented Arina Dmitrieva.

It is not known exactly when new opportunities will appear, but music rights holders promise until the end of this year.

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

The VKontakte press service 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 will most likely be implemented in a similar way to Apple Music and can be issued for a month, providing access to advanced features.

Currently 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.

The head of the Yandex.Music business development group, Andrey Stebunov, said that over the past year the audience of Yandex music services has grown one and a half times; now the monthly audience of the Yandex.Music and Yandex.Radio services is more than 20 million users. In his opinion, users appreciate good quality sound and convenience, therefore 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 - 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 him listen to his favorite music and discover new ones,” commented Andrey Stebunov.

Music will also return to the social network’s iOS apps, when is also not specified. In February 2014 Apple of the Year 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 the iPhone and iPad applications.

On July 15 of 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 others Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment), and the social network VKontakte “signed a settlement agreement with Universal Music Group to resolve unresolved lawsuits (such agreements have also already been concluded with two others).

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

Director of Public Relations at the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Melodiya Firma Karina Abrahamyan said that people stopped buying albums and began buying subscriptions to music services because 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.

Last quarter, for the first time, we earned more from streaming than from downloading albums. An album costs on average 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 the music. Apple Music is actively developing, users are already ready for the subscription model, comments Karina Abrahamyan. - Playlists that have millions of listens are popular with users (because there is a lot of different music) and bring good income to copyright holders. Starting from October, we will become the first Russian copyright holder - curator of playlists on Apple Music. Naturally, we will promote our audio recordings, but also add audio from other copyright holders so that the playlists become popular with users. Probably, VKontakte will do the same story, with editors and curators.

For the first time in ten years, the social network “VKontakte” carried out a large-scale update of the “Music” section. In addition to the fact that the changes affected appearance and the functionality of the section, a paid subscription has appeared in the mobile version of the social network to save audio recordings offline and listen to tracks without advertising.

Listen for free, save for money

The function of saving music in a cache for later listening offline has migrated to the Boom mobile application, which offers a fixed tariff for 149 rubles. per month. With it, an Android or iOS user gets unlimited access to tracks and also gets rid of audio advertising.

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

“You can still listen to music on VKontakte for free,” emphasized VKontakte press secretary Evgeniy. 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 music rights holders 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 stated that listening to music offline cannot be free.

Krasnikov clarified that music caching, previously available for Android users, disappears, 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 a paid subscription immediately applies to three social networks that are part of the holding: 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, 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 a paid subscription is not required to listen to music via the web version on a computer. As for third party applications offering to save music on VKontakte for free, the necessary measures have already been taken social network in December 2016 - then VKontakte disabled the ability to search for audio recordings through software interface(API).

Musical consultations

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

VKontakte united 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 updated service and beginning a new stage of its development,” said the managing director of VKontakte.

Updated “Music” section on VKontakte // Press service of the social network

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

appeared in the center quick access to playlists that can now be shared on the wall or in private messages.

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