Sounds.ru

The founder of the project was programmer Pavel Anatolyevich Sokolov-Khodakov. He was born in Moscow on March 17, 1971; in his teens he made his first computer and synthesizer ^[4] . After graduating from school No. 597, he received an incomplete higher education at the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics of Moscow State University , worked as a teacher and programmer. After programming, Khodakov’s second hobby was music. He collected records of foreign artists, collected lyrics; He visited apartment owners, where he took pictures for the underground magazines Ur Light and Third Modernization and helped to print them in his own bathroom, where he was once caught and taken to Lubyanka , after which he was fired from work.

His passion for music and web technologies was embodied in a music site launched in October 1996 at www.music.ru with RiNet , whose director Sergey Ryzhkov was a friend of Khodakov ^[5] ; December 16, 1996 ^[1] the official opening of the site ^[6] took place. At the initial stage, the library was replenished, which is a file in Real Audio format ^[7] , and only two years later articles of journalists began to be published ^[8] .

At the beginning of 1997, Sonia Sokolova joined the work on the server, who took the post of editor and marketing manager and became the wife of Khodakov. Pavel and Sophia met David Datta, a programmer who participated in the creation of the music database All Music Guide , and he sent the authors the necessary information ^[5] . Over time, the project came up with a program on Radio Racurs and a hit parade in the magazine Capital , and the first festival of the site was held on the first anniversary of its creation ^[7] . By that time, its popularity had grown, and since 1998 the project began to develop advertising activities ^[5] . In April 1999, he made it to the final of the ROTOR contest in the nomination “Music Site of the Year”.

In February 2000, reports appeared in the press about the threat of the closure of Music.Ru ^[9] . In an open letter published on the site, the authors of the project spoke about the takeover of the domain by Port.ru , which was chosen as a new investor in September 1999 ^[10] . Under the terms of the agreement, she bought out a stake in RiNet, having obtained the right to administer the domain, and had to increase investments during the year, after which she would be considered a 50% co-owner of the project with the prospect of buying out a controlling stake from the authors. However, Port.ru changed the terms of the deal unilaterally, notifying the Music.Ru team that the company does not need their services. To the offer of protesting developers to return to Port.ru the amount spent, she refused, after which they ^{[ who? ]} transferred all the content to the domain www.zvuki.ru, where the former Music.Ru staff ^{[6] [11]} began work on February 16, 2001. In the same month, the project under a new name received the first award, taking second place in the competition "ROTOR ++" in the nomination "Musical site of the year", and in May won the same nomination "ROTOR".

On October 26, 2002, the founder of Sounds, Pavel Sokolov, passed away ^[12] . After his death, the portal was headed by Sonya Sokolova, who remains his permanent editor-in-chief. In December 2006, the portal celebrated its 10th anniversary with a large festival, which was attended by Zemfira , groups " Polite refusal " and Vegomatic ^[13] . In 2007, on the portal’s birthday, each editorial staff was able to invite a “personal” musician from abroad to the festival ^[14] .