For most users of Apple gadgets, iTunes, the pre-installed Apple media player, is the obvious go-to application for listening to music. More discerning music lovers who want high-quality playback in all types of audio formats, might find the Ukrainian-developed VOX app a better solution.
The audio player had been downloaded 1 million times worldwide, and boasts more than 200,000 active monthly users. It’s been around for eight years now, but the key to its present success is the extensive development and upgrades done by Coppertino, a Ukrainian company with a research and development office in Kyiv. Company headquarters is in California, where it develops software for Apple products.
VOX was originally the brainchild of Italian Alessio Nonni, who released the first version of the player in 2007. Six years later Coppertino bought VOX and the rights to develop it further while granting Nonni shareholder rights in the company.
CEO Ivan Ablamskyi leads Coppertino’s team of about 20 people. He is a passionate fan of VOX. After upgrades stopped being issued for the player, and his much-loved app became difficult to use on the latest versions of Apple’s operating system, he decided to advance the app and developed VOX into its present form.
VOX has the ability to play audio files with a much higher resolution than regular audio files. Also it allows users to listen to audio formats that are not supported by iTunes, such as FLAC and Ogg Vorbis. Its capabilities have thus attracted both ordinary music lovers and professional music producers.
Ablamskyi also highlights VOX’s similarity to the old-fashioned Winamp media player, which was easy to use and extremely popular among early users of personal computers in the late 1990s.
“Those, who remember the old Winamp [program] must find VOX very similar,” says Ablamskyi. “You just click on a file and it plays on VOX. In iTunes you have to add all your audio files to your iTunes library to synchronize them first.”
When VOX for Mac was released on Apple’s App Store in August 2013, it zoomed into the lists of top apps on App stores worldwide in just three hours. It’s free of charge, although it does offer the in-app purchase of Internet radio streaming via VOX for $4.99.
Ivan Ablamskyi, the chief executive officer at Coppertino, talks about VOX audio player in Kyiv office on June 6.
Soon afterward, the app caught the eye of investors at Coppertino, and Ukraine’s AVentures Capital venture fund invested almost $400,000 in 2013. Then in April, soon after the release of the VOX iPhone version, the newly created Ukrainian venture fund BeValue and several angel investors invested an undisclosed amount.
Coppertino, which was founded by Ablamskyi and his friend Petro Bondarevskyi in 2012, had been working on other Mac applications before VOX without raising money. Its R&D office in Kyiv released Wallpaper Wizard and Focus, both Mac apps that turned out to be profitable enough to sustain the company’s development.
This spring Coppertino launched the paid service Loop, offering unlimited cloud storage for audio files synchronized with a user’s VOX player. Loop is sold on a subscription basis for $5 dollars per month or $50 per year.
It’s too early to tote up the profits from Loop, as the over 40,000 users that have subscribed are currently using a trial version. But Ablamskyi believes the culture of payment in his users’ countries will soon start to bring in revenues.
“The majority of our users come from the United States, the U.K., France, Germany and other similar countries where the culture of financial gratitude for quality software is well developed. These are solvent customers,” Ablamskyi says.
So when Loop’s trial periods expire this autumn, Ablamskyi expects to see the first profits from the service trickle in.
Kyiv Post staff writer Bozhena Sheremeta can be reached at [email protected]. The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by AVentures Capital,Ciklum, FISON and SoftServe.
