Russians most often listen to music from the phone or in the car

The most popular ways of listening to music among Russians are car speakers and headphones with a smartphone – 32% of users each. This was reported in a joint study by Rambler & Co and audio service “Sound” over 370 thousand people.

In third place in popularity is an external audio system: over 21% of Russians use it. The fourth and fifth lines are occupied by music playback directly from a laptop (8%) and through portable speakers (7%). Almost a quarter of Russians turn on music during household chores, 12% use music as background listening. Every tenth listens to music on headphones in public transport, and users also listen to music while working (7%), before going to bed (6%), while walking (5%) and while playing sports (3%).

The majority of users (44%) search for and include selections for their mood from audio services, almost a third most often listen to their own playlists. 12% of respondents are looking for specific artists, 9% for specific albums. Around 8% rely entirely on recommendations from their favorite music app. The majority of users listen to music through the app (46%), followed by mobile versions (30%), desktop versions (15%) and smart speakers (9%).

Among other audio formats, radio is the most popular: 57% of users listen to it, audiobooks and concerts are preferred by 17% and 15% of users, respectively. Podcasts are listened to by 8% of respondents, and audio performances by 3%. Almost a quarter of users consider the ability to download music to their phone and listen to it offline as an important parameter of an audio service, and 18% of respondents appreciate the ability to listen to tracks in Hi-Fi format. On Russian streaming, playback of compositions in mp3 format with a bit rate from 128 kbps to 320 kbps is mainly available. Higher sound quality is available in Russia in the Sound service and the Apple Music app.

Evgeny Fedunenko