10tracks.ru, Russia’s first cloud music storage site, launched a few days ago, with up to 3 gigabites of storage space available free of charge. Users can listen to their music using a web player or download it onto smartphones or computers to listen to it anywhere. The mobile version is available using an Android application and an iPhone version will soon be available, according to the company.
“Among our advanced features is a special recognition algorithm that increases upload speeds up to 30 times. In addition, the cloud keeps that same folder structure in which mp3 files were stored on a computer,” said 10tracks.ru promotion manager Renat Biktagirov in an exchange with East-West Digital News.
Founded by 25 year old software entrepreneur Vladislav Vernigora, 10tracks won several awards and grants in Tatarstan, a region with strong credentials on the Russian high tech scene.
The 10tracks startup has been financed by the Investment and Venture Fund of the Republic of Tatarstan, a fund supported by the local government. It is a resident of IT-Park, a major technopark in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan.
After fine tuning its product on the domestic market, 10tracks plans to expand to the global market, although Biktagirov acknowledges that international competition will be much keener.
Not only will the Russian startup have to contend with other startups such as Audiobox.fm, Dropbox, and mSpot, among others, it will face such giants as Google and Amazon.com, which also offer cloud storage services for music and other multimedia content.
