“VKontakte” and “Classmates” from April 28 introduced paid music subscription, reported Vedomosti, and confirmed the representative of the Internet holding company Mail.Ru Group (which owns both networks). The size of the active monthly audience of “Vkontakte” in March reached a record high of 97 million users, and the number of active users of “Odnoklassniki” — 71 million people.
The subscription price will be 149 rubles a month. It will allow you to listen to audio in a desktop version and mobile applications of the two social networks as well as in the partner application Boom (it can be link your account with one of the services).
In relation to innovation “Vkontakte” and “Classmates” updated their music sections. In particular, in “Vkontakte” appeared the ability to share playlists.
As said the representatives of the services, users will still have the option to listen to free music, but listening to advertising. 28 April in the desktop version of “Vkontakte” will be playable ads between tracks. How often they appear, the company did not disclose.
The representative of “Vkontakte” Eugene Krasnikov said that the volume of display advertising will depend on the specific user, for example, how often he uses the music section. In this regard, some users don’t even have to deal with ads, he said. Later ads will appear in mobile applications of social networks — when, exactly, the company does not specify.
In the mobile version of “Odnoklassniki” (Android, iOS) commercials will be played today, April 28, a spokesman for the social network Anastasia zhbanova. Earlier the ads were only in the desktop version.
Testing advertising models as in the “Classmates” and “Vkontakte” began in November 2016.
In 2016 Mail.Ru Group has signed partnership agreements with major rights holders production music — Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Merlin Network, etc., and also with several Russian publishers. Contracts require that Mail.Ru Group will pay record labels royalties from each losing track and to share revenues from advertising, remind “sheets”.
Will pay
The main competitor Mail.ru Group — Yandex — music is the service “Yandex.Music” and “Yandex.Radio”, in which between songs playing audio. The monthly audience of these services, according to TNS in March 2017, $ 8.9 million and 1.2 million, respectively.
Mail.ru Group 2017 can make money by advertisements on the Internet 100-200 million rubles that is one third or even half of this market segment in Russia, assesses the CEO of the seller of online advertisements Unisound and CEO of music streaming service Zvooq Mikhail Ilyichev. He explains this by the large amount of audience sites holding significant advertising inventory. According to his estimates, in 2016 the volume of gas amounted to 100 million rubles, and about a third goes to the service “Yandex”.
“When you consider that in the year Mail.ru Group pays for music content to approximately $8-10 million, the company will need from 500 thousand to 1 million subscribers to get profits,” he continues. According to his forecast, in 2018 Mail.ru Group will be able to reach that level.
Director of strategic planning of Digital ADV Aleksandr Safronov believes that this step Mail.ru Group should be considered not from the point of view of earning extra money and as a way to recoup the cost of licensing. “On the other hand, the demand for this format is potentially limited due to its reiteratively,” — said the expert.
By the end of 2017 the market of advertisements in the Internet could reach 200-250 million rubles. according to the pessimistic forecast and more than RUB 500 million in the optimistic forecast, estimated …
