VKontakte audio recordings are deleted. Loading blocked audio recordings on VKontakte. VKontakte deletes music

Over the past 24 hours, users who have downloaded a wide variety of music (from Justin Bieber and Michael Jackson to Black Sabbath and The Rolling Stones) have received a bunch of messages from copyright holders demanding that they delete the downloaded content.

Thus, it is no longer possible to listen to songs by ZAZ, Lana del Rey, Beyoncé, Amy Winehouse, Adele, Shakira, Gwen Stefani and many other performers.

When you try to listen to some of them, a window pops up with the message: “The audio recording [...] was withdrawn from public access due to an appeal from the copyright holder.”

"Durov, bring back the music!"

As soon as the mass deletion of music from VKontakte began, it caused great surprise, bewilderment and resentment among users. Everyone attacked the creator of the social network, Pavel Durov, demanding the return of the music. There was literally a revolution on Twitter because of this. The hashtag #bringbackthemusicvk came out almost in first place.
In turn, TSN.ua website conducted a small study, asking VKontakte users what would happen to them without music on the social network.

It turned out that the majority of users (38.9%) are even ready to leave the social network if their favorite music is no longer there. Almost the same number of users (33.4%) honestly admitted that they go to the social network only for music. And this fact suggests that after the “musical purges” the daily audience of VKontakte may drop sharply.

However, there were also users (1.2%) who were willing to pay for listening to music on VKontakte if the social network agreed to do so. And a little more than 20% of users agree to stand to the last and put up with all the innovations of VKontakte. They will listen to music on third-party resources, but they are not going to leave the social network.

Why is music deleted from VKontakte?

This issue has become one of the priorities over the past few days among VKontakte users. The exact reasons are unknown and everyone is at a loss.
Some say that this is being done in anticipation of the adoption of an anti-piracy law in Russia. Others link the deletion of VKontakte audio recordings to the new owners of the social network.

Messages from the VKontakte administration to users who downloaded music are signed with the names of representatives of copyright holders, that is, lawyers. The larger the label, the more people ultimately see the representative's name.

Elena Trusova, a lawyer at the Goltsblat BLP firm, has become “popular”. It turned out that she protects the interests of labels such as Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music. According to her, she has no right to comment on what is happening.

Why has VKontakte only now started blocking content? In response to this question, the General Director of Universal Music in Russia and the CIS countries, Dmitry Konnov, said that his company first made written complaints against VKontakte only in May 2013.

The package of documents contained justifications for demands to delete several dozen tracks and a threat to go to court. Konnov noted that Russian courts are now not on the side of VKontakte, pointing to the authorities’ preparation of an anti-piracy law. He believes that without pirated music, up to 70% of users will stop visiting the resource every day.

Monetization of VKontakte music

According to the same Konnov, VKontakte can keep the music, but it must become monetized. He suggested using the technology of the two most successful models: the iTunes Store (there is little free stuff) or Spotify (a large free catalog for streaming but with its own problems). But as a TSN survey among Ukrainian VKontakte readers showed, only a little more than 1% of users are willing to pay for music.

VKontakte press secretary Georgy Lobushkin himself is not sure that the social network will launch functionality for monetizing popular music.

Meanwhile, social network users are trying to circumvent the prohibitions of copyright holders,6 for example, changing the name of a foreign artist to a Russian-language equivalent. Many perceived the removal of music from VKontakte as an action by the Russian government to ban foreign music. Thus, in VK you can now find performers Bath without Doors (Lana del Rey), 30 Dumplings from Mars (30 Seconds to Mars) and others.

Not all bloggers are aware of these events yet, because they don’t really like all kinds of social networks)

However, I now actively hang out on VKontakte, mainly for work purposes, but sometimes I listen to music there - it’s convenient, you don’t need to download, you don’t need to buy, you don’t need to search on different shitty sites with free mp3s where you can catch viruses.

But just the other day the freebie ended.

VKontakte has begun the fight against piracy and is deleting music due to copyright infringement!

Now, if you are trying to play your favorite track, you may well see the following message: “The audio recording has been withdrawn from public access due to an appeal from the copyright holder.”

When I found out about this disgrace a couple of days ago, I immediately ran to check my playlist, but ugh ugh so far everything is in place) Meanwhile, quite a lot of music files have already been deleted from VK, and the process continues.

And to hell with it if they removed all the popsicles. So they raised their hand to the sacred - AC/DC, Rammstein, 30STM and much more.

Of course, I understand everything, copyrights and all that, piracy is bad, stealing is illegal, etc. But something tells me that major music labels are not starving anyway, and by prohibiting people from listening to music they are acting like sellers of air) But this is my opinion, I may be wrong.

Why is VKontakte music deleted? I honestly have no idea. As far as I could find out the major muses. labels ( really big ones, like Sony and not sharashkin’s offices) united and dashed off a slander.

There is also an opinion that this is due to the recently adopted bill in Russia to combat piracy and copyright infringement. But be that as it may, this does not bode well for the average user - torrents may be next in line(

By the way, Russian ingenuity showed itself here too - people are actively posting deleted compositions online under encrypted names) So 30STM is now called “30 seconds to the well” and Nirvana is the World of Bath :)

VKontakte deletes music

with unprecedented activity since Friday, June 14th. On this day, many users of the social network received notifications that the music had been deleted. What is happening is explained by the phrase “the audio recording was seized due to an appeal from the copyright holder.”

The ban mainly applies to foreign music. From now on, on VKontakte you cannot listen to such foreign performers as Justin Bieber, Shakira, Pink, Slade, Coldplay, Lana Del Ray, Adele. However, the audio recordings were not completely cleaned out - songs of a number of “banned” performers can still be found without problems by searching on VKontakte.

VKontakte deletes audio recordings: why?

VKontakte users linked the ban to foreign music on a social network with the name Vitaly Milonov (possibly because Justin Bieber’s songs were the first to be deleted). Allegedly, the St. Petersburg parliamentarian introduced a number of amendments, according to which songs of foreign performers began to be removed from VKontakte. However, the development of such a bill had not previously been reported in the media, and Milonov himself denied his connection with the ban on foreign music on the social network. "It's fake. Such statements have no basis,” said Vitaly Milonov.

VKontakte deletes music in preparation for anti-piracy law, suggested State Duma deputy Robert Schlegel, who is part of the working group on the “anti-piracy” law (on June 14, the document was adopted in the first reading). In his opinion, foreign music is removed from VKontakte because it is pirated. “In fact, there is no more pirated resource in Russia than VKontakte,” the deputy said.

Why VKontakte deletes music

Why does VKontakte delete music? The company's press secretary, Georgy Lobushkin, explained this to users on his online page. According to him, the social network has previously deleted audio recordings and films at the request of copyright holders. But recently, there have been many more requests from companies due to pirated music and videos.

VKontakte deletes audio recordings, the rights to which belong to the largest music companies. The list of those making their claims includes Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner UK Music Group. These companies record and release songs by many foreign artists. It is noteworthy that Odnoklassniki says that they do not receive such requests.

VKontakte deletes audio recordings not only foreign performers, but also domestic pop stars (often this happens by court decision). But not everything is deleted, but only when legitimate copyright holders complain. “This choice does not depend on us,” the press secretary said. Initially, Lobushkin also wrote that the deletion of VKontakte audio recordings had nothing to do with the new laws. But after a remark in the comments from the founder of the social network, Pavel Durov, that “it is still indirectly connected,” Lobushkin corrected the initial message.

Ban on foreign music VKontakte

VK users protested against deleting audio recordings from social network pages. Users began masking artist names, making it harder to find music. So, Lana Del Rey became “Bathroom Without Doors”, and Coldplay became “Cold Games”. In addition, such performers as “5 dudes” (Maroon 5), “30 seconds to the well” (30 seconds to Mars) appeared on the social network. At the same time, the Rammstein group began to be called simply “Rammstein”, and the band’s songs were “Du Hast”, “Sun”, “Mama”.

As part of a protest against the removal of audio recordings from VKontakte, active activity took place on the social network Twitter. The hashtag #bringbackthemusic is often published on social networks. In addition, several VKontakte groups have appeared in which users are encouraged to leave the social network. The group “We are leaving VK” says that due to the ban on foreign music, several audio recordings of “Bathtubs without Doors” have already been deleted. Even before these groups appeared, Victoria Daineko, who received complaints from Sony Music, left the social network. According to the singer, without audio recordings, no one needs VKontakte.

Loading blocked audio recordings on VKontakte

• Sound

I have been a reader of Habr for a long time, but have not yet written a single article. This post prompted me to write this article: .

I liked the methods used by the author to bypass the VKontakte filter, but as a person who has been involved in audio processing and writing music for a long time, I can say that this is not the best decision that can be made in this situation, and here’s why:
1. The quality of audio recordings deteriorates due to repeated conversion and deliberate deterioration of quality.
2. Cutting a piece of a piece changes the music.

I propose a slightly different approach to solving this problem. Anyone interested in the topic - please see cat. I'll go into more detail about several methods that you can use to bypass the filter, including a method that allows you to download blocked music without changing its content (i.e., completely preserving the sound).

All tests were performed in the Audacity program; a song performed by rapper Pitbull and singer Marc Anthony, called Rain Over Me, was selected for analysis. This particular song is suitable for the test for several reasons: it is “banned” on VKontakte, all frequencies are present in its spectrum in full, it has both “quiet” and “loud” parts, which will allow you to experiment with dynamics. First, let's make sure that it is impossible to listen to the audio recording, because... it was removed at the request of the copyright holder:

As you can see, it’s true that the original audio recording has been seized, and when we try to download the same one, we will receive a copyright warning:

Now let's try to load the same audio recording, slightly changing it in some way.

Ways to bypass the filter

1. Changing the tonal balance of the entire work, or part of it, that is, processing with an equalizer:

Here I immediately present the result of what I came to; in fact, I unwisely began to try to “feed” an audio recording with a slightly changed tonal balance to VKontakte, so that it was practically impossible to hear the difference (for example, I used low-pass filters and high-pass filters with very soft settings - the difference in sound was negligible). VKontakte rejected posts with such changes, but, interestingly, accepted posts processed like this:

This means that recognition occurs only in the mid-frequency region, high and low frequencies are not affected. The first option is to equalize the entire track: you need to cut out a small area of ​​the mid-frequency range. I tried to apply EQ only to a small section of the track - it didn’t work.

2. Adding noise

Adding enough white noise to be heard clearly did not help the audio load. This method is not suitable for us, because if the noise can be heard, then we can assume that the audio recording is damaged and cannot be listened to =(

3. Working with track dynamics

"Crown" method

If this article is of interest to readers, then I can take a closer look at each of the methods of downloading music (I guess that the “crown” method will soon be “covered”), depending on the material (classical, rock, pop, electronics). Each of the options will work better on one material and worse on another, that is, in some places it is more noticeable to a person, and in others practically without changing the source.

The article turned out to be not as complete as I would like, for the reason that my DAW refused to work and began to throw an error (so I did all the work in Audacity). I guess there are a few other ways that will work:

1. Working with the stereo base (its expansion/constriction)
2. Processing the entire track with a multiband exciter
3. Multiband compression of the mid-frequency range, to a much lesser extent than discussed in the article.
4. Adding a very weak reverb signal, inaudible to the human ear.

Over the past 24 hours, users who have downloaded a wide variety of music (from Justin Bieber and Michael Jackson to Black Sabbath and The Rolling Stones) have received a bunch of messages from copyright holders demanding that they delete the downloaded material.

Thus, it is no longer possible to listen to songs by ZAZ, Lana del Rey, Beyoncé, Amy Winehouse, Adele, Shakira, Gwen Stefani and many other performers.

When you try to listen to some of them, a window pops up with the message: “The audio recording [...] was withdrawn from public access due to an appeal from the copyright holder.”

As soon as the mass deletion of music from VKontakte began, it caused great surprise, bewilderment and resentment among users. Everyone attacked the creator of the social network, Pavel Durov, demanding the return of the music.

There was literally a revolution on Twitter because of this. The hashtag #bringbackthemusicvk came out almost in first place.

Why is music deleted from VKontakte?

This issue has become one of the priorities over the past few days among VKontakte users. The exact reasons are unknown and everyone is at a loss.

Some say that this is being done in anticipation of the adoption of an anti-piracy law in Russia, others argue that this is connected with the new owners of VKontakte and all the roots go back to the Kremlin.

“In fact, in Russia there is no more pirated resource than VKontakte. It needs to think about how to sell content, enter into agreements with copyright holders, as YouTube does,” says State Duma deputy Robert Schlegel, a member of the working group on the “anti-piracy” bill.

Messages from the VKontakte administration to users who downloaded music are signed with the names of representatives of copyright holders, that is, lawyers. The larger the label, the more people ultimately see the representative's name. Elena Trusova, a lawyer at the Goltsblat BLP firm, became “popular.” In turn, TSN.ua conducted a small study, asking VK users what would happen to them without music on the social network. It turned out that the majority of users (38.9%) are ready even remove themselves from the social network if their favorite music is no longer there. Almost the same number of users (33.4%) honestly admitted that they go to the social network only for music.

And this fact suggests that after the “musical purges” the daily audience of VKontakte may drop sharply.

There were also users (1.2%) who were willing to pay for listening to music on VKontakte if the social network would do so.

And a little more than 20% of users agree to stand to the last and put up with all the innovations of VKontakte. They will listen to music on third-party resources, but they are not going to leave the social network.

It turned out that she protects the interests of labels such as Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music. According to her, she has no right to comment on what is happening.

Why has VKontakte only now started blocking content? In response to this question, the General Director of Universal Music in Russia and the CIS countries, Dmitry Konnov, said that his company first made written complaints against VKontakte only in May 2013.

The package of documents contained justifications for demands to delete several dozen tracks and a threat to go to court. Konnov noted that Russian courts are now not on the side of VKontakte, pointing to the authorities preparing an anti-piracy law.

Konnov believes that without pirated music, up to 70% of VKontakte users will stop visiting the resource every day.

Monetization of VKontakte music

According to the same Konnov, VKontakte can keep the music, but it must become monetized.

He suggested using the technology of the two most successful models: the iTunes Store (there is little free stuff) or Spotify (a large free catalog for streaming but with its own problems).

But as a survey among our VKontakte readers showed, just over 1% of users are willing to pay for music.

VKontakte press secretary Georgy Lobushkin himself is not sure that the social network will launch functionality for monetizing popular music. “We’ll wait and see,” he commented.

Resourceful Users

Many perceived the removal of music from VKontakte as an action by the Russian government to ban foreign music. Thus, in VK you can now find performers of “Bathtub without Doors” (Lana del Rey), 30 Dumplings from Mars (30 Seconds to Mars) and others.