History
On September 22, 2010, Yandex announced the launch of a separate service, Yandex Music, which allowed streaming of songs, albums and collections of various artists to user device on demand. More than 50 rightsholders provided content for the service, including Universal, EMI, Warner Music Group, Sony Music, First Music Publishing, Monolit, SBA Production etc.[10]
800 thousand tracks by 58 thousand artists were available in the catalogue at the time of launch.[11]
On May 30, 2012, Yandex released the Yandex Music application for iOS.[12]
In May 2013, the Yandex Music application for Android was released.[13]
In September 2014, Yandex started using the system of personal recommendations. Playlist forming became sensitive to the personal musical preferences of the user and his friends on Vkontakte and Facebook. The interface also changed significantly.[14]
In October 2017, Yandex made a complete redesign of the service. The sections "New Releases", "Playlists with New Compositions", "Mood and Genres" and "Charts" were added to the main page. The player and the artist screens also changed.[15]
In June 2018, Yandex Music was launched in Armenia. By the time of the launch, the interface was translated into Armenian, the service’s editorial team prepared playlists with Armenian music, and daily updated charts with tracks popular in Armenia appeared on the main page.[16]
In October 2018, Yandex Music was launched in Israel. The catalog has been updated. Popular local artists have been added. The search started to understand queries in English and Hebrew.[17]
In 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a number of foreign copyright holders ceased cooperation with Yandex Music, thereby users lost access to some foreign tracks, while the service suffered record losses.[18]
