Sound (formerly SberSound)

LLC "Sound" (formerly Zvooq) is the first independent music service in Russia, a pioneer in the Russian music streaming market.

History

2023: Placing the program on the BI.Zone Bug Bounty platform

Sound will pay independent baghunters from the BI.ZONE Bug Bounty platform to detect potential security vulnerabilities in products and technology solutions as part of a running program. This was announced on April 26, 2023 by BI.Zone. More details here.

2022: Sberbank ceased to be a shareholder of Sound

As TAdviser found out, Sberbank's subsidiary Digital Assets LLC, which was the founder and co-founder of a number of companies related to the bank's digital business, withdrew from these assets in May. In particular, from the companies "Center for Speech Technologies" (CST), "Cloud Technologies" (operates on the market under the SberCloud brand), "Okko," "Evotor." In addition, Digital Assets LLC left the Sound company. Read more here.

2020: Inclusion in the Sberbank ecosystem

Sberbank on September 23, 2020 informed TAdviser about the creation of an audio streaming service based on an independent player - the Sound company.

Sberbank launches a competitor "Yandex. Music. " Photo source: smg-azs.ru

The service will receive the SberSound brand and will combine 40 million songs on its platform from the world's leading copyright holders (Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group), local and independent recording studios, as well as a collection of audiobooks and podcasts.

As a result of the transaction, Sberbank will receive a 100% stake in Sound. Mikhail Ilyichev, who headed Sound from 2014 to 2017, will be re-appointed General Director of the service. Igor Mukhin, who served as general director since March 2018, will remain in the team.

Audio streaming is a strategically important element of the Lifestyle industry and the world's large ecosystems. Music contributes to customer engagement, is easily integrated into package offerings. Subscribers to music services more often make purchases within the same online session. All this allows you to improve customer experience within one ecosystem and increase loyalty to the main brand.

As a result of the transaction, "Sound" will be maximally integrated into the Sberbank ecosystem in all key areas, will complement and improve existing services. Having your own music service will allow ecosystem companies to create products. Sberbank and Sound have already completed the integration of the audio streaming service with Sberbank ID, in the near future they plan to complete the integration with the SberPay payment service. Music will also be presented in future subscription services and smart devices of the bank. The logo and name of the music service will change on all platforms of the company: on the sber-zvuk.com website, in the mobile application and on social networks.

Using operational and technological developments, expertise and experience of other businesses of the joint platform, creating services with companies of the Sberbank ecosystem, "Sound" will be able to become a leader in the audio streaming market in Russia, the bank is confident.

{{quote 'author = Lev Khasis, First Deputy Chairman of the Management Board of Sberbank' Sberbank constantly expands the capabilities of its ecosystem and develops solutions based on the needs and requests of our clients. In Russia, there are more than 64 million online music listeners, and half of music service users listen to music for more than one hour a day. Investments in the development of ʺZvukaʺ are fully consistent with the strategy for the development of the bank's ecosystem: thanks to them, we strengthen our offer to customers in the entertainment market. After all, Lifestyle is an integral part of our lives, and entertainment is the fastest growing direction of this market. We are delighted to welcome the team. I am sure that the guys will take the same worthy and special place in our ecosystem that music occupies in the life of every person. }}

For "Sound," as an independent player, music has invariably been the main focus in business, and the needs of the listener are the main priority in work. The team always knew what needed to be done to best meet audience demand in audio content, but did not always have enough resources to do so. Combining the accumulated experience and knowledge with the capabilities of Sberbank will create a leading service that will take the user's attention in all numerous moments of life when there is no screen in front of a person, but he is available to at least one connected device with a speaker. Mikhail Ilyichev, director of the music service "Sound"

2016

Zvooq, an ecosystem of music services that has been developing since 2011, was part of Dream Industries (DI) IT holding. In the summer of 2016, the application totaled more than 5 million registered users, the active monthly audience of the service was 1.2-1.5 million.

Music service Zvooq filed a lawsuit against Yandex for $29 million

Russian music service Zvooq has sued Yandex. The company is demanding $29 million from the search engine to poach two employees.

According to a Vedomosti source in the service, Yandex violated the "written agreements" by hiring Zvooq technical director Konstantin Ryabinin and marketing chief Varvara Semenikhina. Ryabinin became the head of Yandex search projects, and Semenikhina headed marketing at Yandex.Music^[1].

Shazam and Zvooq announce mutual application integration

The world music recognition service Shazam The number of ^[2] and the music application Zvooq launched in the summer of 2016 a partner project for the mutual integration of applications in Russia and the CIS countries, including Ukraine and Belarus, as well as in Georgia. This was reported to CNews by Brainrus, the official representative of Shazam and Brainient advertising technologies in Russia.

The collaboration is aimed primarily at expanding the capabilities of both services and simplifying the search and playback of the music you like. As a result of two-way integration, Shazam users have the ability to listen to recognized songs in the Zvooq application, and Zvooq listeners can now recognize music content faster and more conveniently and add tracks they like to their music collection.

The Shazam app on Android and iOS platforms has a "Listen to Zvooq" button, which allows users to listen to recognized tracks without restrictions and add them to their personal collection. Zvooq users can recognize any music by clicking on the Shazam icon inside the app. Also in Zvooq for iOS there was a section with selections of music from Shazam and the function of automatically creating playlists from recognized tracks. If the user has not downloaded one of the applications, when clicking on the button, he goes to the App/Google Store for installation.

25 million tracks via Tele2

On June 8, 2016, Tele2 and Zvooq announced the opening of the company's subscribers to listen to music from mobile devices. In the music catalog, more than 25 million tracks and Tele2 customers got access to it.

The Zvooq mobile application allows you to listen to music from the catalog for free, add your favorite tracks to your personal collection and form individual playlists. Users of the service can download any songs to a smartphone and play them offline.

The app runs on all mobile devices running iOS 7.1, Android 4.1 or later and is available in the AppStore and Google Play.

If desired, Tele2 customers can listen to music without an Internet connection, without advertising and with an unlimited number of rewinding of tracks - you need to purchase a premium subscription, the cost of which is 7.5 rubles. per day. At the same time, there is also no fee for traffic when listening to music. The premium version is available to all new subscribers of "Zvooq for Tele2": the operator provides the opportunity to use the service for free during the first month after connection.

Tele2 constantly uses new solutions to launch interesting and attractive services. Today we offer subscribers a convenient and profitable service "Zvooq for Tele2." Now music can accompany our customers always and everywhere. Thanks to agreements with our partners from Zvooq, Tele2 subscribers will use the application on especially favorable terms. We zeroed Internet traffic for all subscribers of the service and gave them the opportunity to test the premium version of Zvooq for free. Pavel Chunikhin, Tele2 Product Director

Music − an important part of everyday life, it accompanies us in any business, in any circumstances. We believe that music should be available to every person. Together with Tele2, we offer Russian listeners the possibilities of a music service and even its premium subscription on special terms, this is a very important partnership for us. Svetlana Yavorskaya, CMO Zvooq

2015: Moving to an advertising model with free music

Zvooq has changed the model of content provision since January 2015 and has become the only completely free legal music service in Russia. From January 20, Zvooq allows you to choose any songs, albums or collections, and then listen to them for free in any volume and without time restrictions. The service makes audio content free for users through an advertising monetization model. During the testing of the new model, users have already listened to 5 million minutes of licensed music.

The Zvooq service on January 20 invited users to listen to music in a new way. Now it works in two modes - freemium (free) and premium (paid with advanced functionality).

The freemium mode provides full access to the Zvooq music library, which includes more than 20 million songs from 25,000 labels and over 0.5 million artists. Other legal music services play free only radio streams or ready-made collections in shuffle mode (random playback). Zvooq allows you to independently, including from a mobile phone, select and play any song or album (music on-demand), as well as collect personal collections and editorial collections available from any device and listen to all this without restrictions on volume and time.

Premium mode is a paid version (150 rubles per month), allows you to save your favorite music on your phone and listen to it outside the city, roaming, on the subway or just save on mobile traffic. In addition, subscribers of the premium Zvooq + mode will never hear ads, and soon they will be able to listen to music in the best sound quality (high bitrate), buy discounted concert tickets and other lucrative offers of goods and services related to music and lifestyle.

Updated Zvooq mobile apps are available on the App Store, Android Market and Google Play. The total amount of free music listened to by users using mobile applications and the Zvooq portal during the testing of the new model has already amounted to about 5 million minutes.

"The correct base price of any music service focused on mass consumption should be zero rubles, zero kopecks," says Mikhail Ilyichev, Managing Director of Zvooq. - For most, music is the background for any occupation, you can do without background listening, and therefore not spend money. After all, we have all been accustomed to free solutions for a long time: and here it's not only about audio piracy, music is given to the digital platform in free circulation legally and is unlikely to ever be withdrawn from there - music channels and radio, including online, YouTube, etc. "..

working model that will bring more money to artists and other market participants, we have taken certain risks," says Zvooq content director Mikhail Konstantinov. - Individual copyright holders still believe that restrictions on access to music by time, volume, freedom of choice can make people pay. Since they include various conditions in this regard in license agreements, listening to part of our catalog in free mode has to be subsidized. But we expect this year to prove the viability of our concept, create an effective alternative to piracy and finally change the rules and approaches to the distribution and monetization of online music. "

"The habit of listening to music online, without downloading, has already been formed among Russians, it remains only to realize its commercial potential," says Stanislav Tushinsky, general director of the Unisound agency (sells online audio advertising). - Audio advertising is the key that starts the economy around online music. It is she who allows music services to become profitable, while providing basic free access to content. The ability to listen to music for free will attract the mass user, and the service will be able to monetize all user activity: not only paying for advanced functionality, but background listeners, of which the majority. In addition, the free mode allows you to first compile the most accurate profile of listeners, and then offer them such paid services that they simply cannot refuse. "

2014

As of July 2014, her catalog contains 15 million songs from 25,000 labels and more than half a million artists. This is the only independent company in Russia that develops legal online music services, acts as an intermediary between listeners and copyright holders and seeks to ensure mass access of users to online music, reduce piracy and develop related business models. Zvooq has 2 million registered users, and the company itself offers not only b2b, but also b2b2c solutions for mobile operators, manufacturers of electronic devices and even for online retail.

Investment $3.5 million from Ulmart

Full entry into the market became possible after the receipt of LLC "Sound" in May 2014 of investments from the online retailer "Ulmart," which invested $3.5 million in the project through IT-Holding Dream Industries. By the end of 2014, the company plans to withdraw all elements of its Zvooq ecosystem of music services from pilot mode and begin monetizing them, among them there is a radio application for smartphones and tablets, an application only with domestic music and even a product that will give access to music to users of ordinary mobile phones.

Launch of Unisound - an audio ad seller

On July 2, 2014, it became known that after the closure of the next round of investments through the Dream Industries IT holding, the Zvooq music service switched to a "combat" mode of operation and will be monetized not only by charging users, but also through Internet audio advertising, the market of which in Russia in the company is estimated at 1-1.5 billion rubles a year. By the end of 2014, the company plans to release a whole line of music products that take into account the peculiarities of music consumption by Runet users in different segments, and begin monetizing them according to the advertising model.

In the spring of 2014, Dream Industries IT Holding launched a new project - Unisound, the first specialized online audio seller in Russia. According to Unisound, the coverage of online audio at this time in Russia is 47 million unique users per month, the total number of listens for the same period is 420 million hours. Thus, the available volume for marketing communications will be more than one billion advertising contacts per month. Now, considering that the average cost per thousand contacts with users (CPM) is planned to be about 150 rubles, it is not difficult to calculate that the size of this market and the income that its participants can receive is from 1 to 1.5 billion rubles a year as early as June 2014.

Zvooq believes in an advertising model of monetization, since it has proven its effectiveness in working with other types of licensed content in Runet, and in some Western countries already in working with online music directly, and also caused a significant decrease in the level of piracy, since users have received an adequate alternative in these countries.

Obviously, the music industry needs new ways to distribute and monetize music on the Web. On the one hand, it is necessary to provide truly massive access for users to legal music without any threshold at the entrance, in order, among other things, to successfully compete with pirates, and on the other, to be able to stably and make a lot of money on this.

Unisound is the first specialized seller of online audio advertising in Russia, combining platforms with legal audio content into a single advertising network, which, along with Zvooq, will include online services of large radio holdings, as well as social networks that have cleared the rights to their music content. The first test placements of audio advertising on the Web are scheduled for August 2014.

Zvooq is convinced that charging users for access to music alone cannot lead to financial success, even if the best music service from a user's point of view, and therefore will not give the music industry the desired income from online distribution of content.

real fans and music fans are ready to pay for access to music, who need to live with the knowledge that they can always and everywhere get exactly what they need and in the best quality. But as we know, there are no more than 10-15% of us, the rest are simply not averse to listening to something. They have quite pleasant music by ear, which surrounds us everywhere and fills the space today in almost the same way as the air - says Mikhail Ilyichev, CEO of Dream Industries holding. - Even if you leave pirated services outside the brackets, there are radio broadcasts in the car, in the office, at home, a huge number of various music videos and all this is now available not only through radio or television receivers, but also through the Network for free. Why pay something else extra for access to music? "

"Online audio in terms of audience size is already larger than, for example, online video. Music is already on the Web, and people consume it there in huge quantities. Two or three interruptions per hour with one advertising audio video in each is more than honest with the user who received everything he needed absolutely free of charge, says Stanislav Tushinsky, CEO of Unisound. - Now our main task is to unlock for advertisers the huge potential that is contained in the Runet segment that has already developed around audio content. To do this, we develop advertising technology, form a line of commercial products and interact with TNS Russia in the direction of measuring the audio segment in general and the effectiveness of advertising formats based on audio content, in particular. Advertising formats in online music are more effective than many others, provide advertising communications with full access to the mobile platform and have every chance of becoming the main topic of 2015 in the field of advertising in Runet. "

App Store Success

On July 8, 2014, Zvooq became the leader in the company's App Store online store for Apple apps smartphones and tablets. The Zvooq application of the Internet holding Dream Industries came out on top in the ranking of the Russian segment among the programs presented in the App Store. Russian music application with legal music shows similar results for the first time.

To become the leader of the Russian segment of the App Store, the Zvooq application took three weeks. During the first, the application was downloaded on average by several hundred users every day. By the end of the second, the number of downloads increased to several thousand, and in the first week of July, the daily number of Zvooq downloads ranged from 12 to 18 thousand. The app was installed on their mobile phones by users from 10 countries, with 89% of downloads made from Russia.

Such results allowed the application to take second place in the overall top of the Russian App Store for all thematic categories ("App Store Russia," category Overall, July 4) and take a confident first place in the category "Music" ("App Store Russia," category Music, July 27-4). Until now, the leaders have been mainly numerous gaming applications, as well as social media applications and communication services.

Music services offering licensed music have never managed to achieve such results in the Russian App Store. For example, the first Fonoteka application released by Zvooq, which was presented to users in October 2013, downloads only 3-5 thousand users every month.

Several factors explain the success of the new Zvooq app. The Zvooq application made it possible to listen online to the entire catalog of licensed content - more than 15 million legal compositions from copyright holders, as well as synchronize an unlimited number of tracks, albums and selections (playlists) for listening on a mobile phone without an Internet connection. Zvooq has genre filters, you can collect personal collections of music for different occasions and create your own collections of tracks. All user activity within the application is synchronized with its profile on the WEB version of the service located at zvooq.com, and vice versa.

The Zvooq service provides users with instant access to their favorite music.

"Our application is designed for those who are tired of tormenting themselves with the question 'what to listen to?'," Says Zvooq project manager Bas Grasmeier. - Music recommended for your tastes, collections from our editorial office and the most rated songs from the top of the charts - all this is posted on the first screen of the application. Experimentalists can click on the dice icon to include a random album. But this, of course, does not limit the functionality of the application: you can track the activity of other users who are similar to you in musical preferences, as well as get recommendations for all occasions - music for a party, travel, sports hall, road and just a pleasant morning. "

Music services with large licensed audio libraries are almost not presented in the Russian App Store today. On the one hand, the players of the legal market mainly try not to take risks: since the level of piracy remains high, for the user, in addition to the audio content itself, the functional component is also important. Thus, along with paying for the content itself, additional investments in research and development are required from the service owner. On the other hand, public music libraries such as Russian social media apps VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, which were most often used to listen to music, disappeared from the online supermarket in the spring of 2014.

Notes