Surprising Sounds: The Music Service does a good job of creating playlists • Conversely, poor translation and the app doesn't reinvent the wheel • Review
Yandex - Israeli Music // Photo: Ariel Gavish
The musical parallel to what Netflix did to the video streaming market most of us attribute to the Apple Music service. Until a few years ago, the local market was largely out of the game, especially with regard to Israeli music, but thanks to Dizer, and now Yandex, that is changing. We checked out the Yandex Music Service.
When we were teenagers, our favorite pastime after school was digging into the shelves of small, crowded stores. So, before the digital age, recording a collection of a popular band for twenty shekels was a bargain.
The years have passed and most of the listening to music is now in the headphones, whether in the gym, on the street or in public transport. Only beneficiaries will continue to listen to music on the home stereo system. Even then, in most cases, it will be a music service that transmits to the system via Bluetooth and not a disc player; In those twenty shekels of time you can get much more today.
Extended menu // Screenshot: Ariel Gavish
About two years ago, Deezer entered the country with the news of an Israeli harmful catalog and now Yandex is making a similar move with its music service, "Yandex Music."
Once you have opened and verified an account, you will be asked to select a fair amount of artists and bands so that Yandex's engine will have enough information to build playlists for your musical tastes. It is worth investing and not saving the choice of artists so that the musical profile that is built will be as diverse as possible. The investment proves to be quite fast and after a few uses it is clear that the Yandex engine does the job and plays music to our liking.
True, considering that we have marked at least 30 artists is not great wisdom, but when the engine offers songs we did not know, and we liked them too, it is a little less obvious.
UI and content
Using the app doesn't reinvent the wheel and is very similar to Dizzer's. Scroll right - move a song and left - plays the previous song. We were missing shortcuts or displaying lyrics.
When it comes to Israeli music, like the rest of the apps originating from abroad (again, the obvious comparison is to Dizar) here, too, many of the songs available are those played on local radio stations such as Galgalz: contemporary hits and lots of Mediterranean music. But if you struggle a bit and browse through categories like "Genesis" - you'll find Asaf Amdorsky, Matti Caspi, Lola Advance and Pop Arnon, or "Indie Israeli Folk" - where you'll find mainstream artists like Alon Gilron, Yoav Glossman or Uri Avni.
The Hebrew translation is a bit tricky // Screenshot: Ariel Gavish
To facilitate the "conversion" of the app, Biandex Music has appointed music editors and a local business development team. Israeli songs have, and quite a few, but no good work has been done on the translation. The playback names are awkward and appear to have been translated into Google from Russian to Hebrew: "Songs that Keep the Dark Out" or "Don't Spend - Stretch". Maybe in Russian it sounds better.
For music selection, Liandex has a catalog of about 50 million titles, including several thousand songs in Hebrew and some useful features. One is "radio stations" that allow you to refresh the music stream and change direction according to mood, genre or activity type so you can create your own virtual radio station. The Yandex algorithm analyzes the user's listening habits and compares them to those of other users and tries to find recommendations here too, only this time not by the artists you have chosen but by the style you want.
Another useful feature for refreshing the song offering is Déjà Vu - an assembly list that the app engine will compile for you that includes songs that were found suitable but not yet listened to.
Google Russian
Soon after Apple acquired Shazam, the popular song recognition app interface, it was redesigned so that after a song was found, Zam offered to play it through Apple Music. Yandex has a similar mechanism called "detection" that detects the song that is playing in your environment. We have tried quite a few times and with a rough estimate we have reached about 75% success, including songs in Hebrew. Not bad at all. Of course the song can be played immediately in the app.
In Russia Yandex is a type of local Google and a company that provides several services - search engine (the fourth largest in the world), taxi booking services and more. As a leading company in a major country like Russia, its search capabilities don't add up to song recognition and another useful feature is "Track search by lyrics" - a song search by line or a few words from it. Have you heard a nice song on the radio but didn't get its name in the name of the operation? Type a line or a few words in the search bar and have a good chance of appearing in the first results. Definitely useful and effective.
Visually, we saw more impressive apps than Yandex Music. The square music cubes are not quite the aesthetic record, the browsing is unpleasant, and we would generally say that design is not the strong side of the app. The browser version did not help improve the impression, probably if (again) we compare to Dizzer or Apple Music. Like Dizar, Yandex also has the option of displaying the lyrics only a pity unlike Dizar, here the lyrics do not progress with the melody.
Price and Summary
Yandex has two types of subscriptions: The free Freemium includes the song recommendations engine (standard audio quality), alongside commercials and is limited in song skipping. The Premium subscription allows you to listen to high-quality music, without commercials, and also downloads songs (for airplane or in-place listening).
The premium subscription price is NIS 9.90 a month when the first month is free. True, there is no possibility of a family subscription (with multiple profiles) but Yandex's service price is slightly lower than the competition.
The bottom line - the music catalog is indeed impressive, the price is lucrative but the interface a little less. If we remember that his purpose is to play music for us, and that he can do his work, design and embarrassment will be forgotten very quickly.
Score: 8.5