Paris based international streaming music service Deezer launched its Russian language version yesterday with few visible signs of adaptation to the local market. Russia is the latest region for Deezer’s internationally deployed service.
Deezer CEO Axel Dauchez expects revenues from online music on the Russian market will increase at least two fold each year over the the next five years. “We want to be a part of this inevitable growth,” he said in an exchange with news agency RIA Novosti.
The French company, however, faces fierce competition in streaming music landscape already densely populated with a range of business models ranging from free to near free. Vkontakte.ru, the leading Russian language social network, has 150 million registered accounts and a virtually unlimited catalog of multimedia content shared by users. Not all content is completely legal, but it is free, making Vkontakte destination number one for young Russian music lovers.
Among popular streaming music offers on the Russian market, there is Fidel.ru and Yandex.Music, each offering millions of legal tracks available in streaming format for free. Also popular among Russian users is Last.fm, the CBS Interactive online radio service.
Zvooq.ru, a new site still in its beta test version, is already gaining strong traction among Russian Internet users with its rich, free streaming offer, its advanced functional design – and a truly amazing user experience. The site claims to have cooperation agreements with 25,000 international record labels.
In contrast, while Deezer’s catalog of 13 million tracks may indeed be attractive to Russian users, access to the tunes does not seem to have been sufficiently adapted to local conditions. Many Russians may simply refuse to pay from $3.99 to $7.99 to listen to music which is likely to be locally available for free on other more established websites. Even among potential users open to trying paid access to music, many will be discouraged by Deezer’s payment system, which requires using a bank card or a Paypal account.
For Russian sites with paid content, a variety of local payment options is the norm. Zvooq users, for example, can subscribe to paid music downloads using a range of popular mobile, online and offline payment systems.
