7digital
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|
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Music, Video, Ebooks |
| Founded | January 2004 |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
| Area served | United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, France, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, US, Canada |
| Key people | Ben Drury, James Kane |
| Services | www.7digital.com, Media Distribution, API |
| Employees | 95 |
| Website | Corporate Site |
7digital is a privately held digital media company based in the United Kingdom that sells downloadable music, video and ebooks. They also provide branded digital products for traditional media companies such as ITV and Channel Five, brands such as Pringles and Miller, and social networking sites Last.FM & Bebo. The company is also notable for its involvement with War Child, for whom they provide the technology behind War Child Music.
Contents |
Corporate history [edit]
The company was founded in January 2004 by Ben Drury and James Kane, who currently serve as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer respectively. The company was originally backed by Balderton Capital, the European arm of venture capital firm Benchmark Capital.
On 28 January 2008 the company announced that it had agreed terms on a £4.25 million ($8.5 million) investment from various groups, including Sutton Place Managers and Balderton Capital. The investment was to be used to launch www.7digital.com in more European countries and the United States,[1] along with expanding the sites offerings to include downloadable video and computer games.[2]
On 3 August 2009 HMV bought a 50% stake in 7digital buying out the venture capital firms for £7.7m in cash, stating that 7digital will become HMV's supplier for all of its digital operations, including a new e-books website for its Waterstone's brand.
From October 2009 7digital moved onto mobile devices starting with the BlackBerry devices. A Mobile site was created to cater for users of mobile devices for which native apps had not yet been created. This was followed up by an Android app release in October 2010 and an iOS app in December 2011. The native app creation was completed in April 2012 with the Windows Phone 7 app release. Throughout this time 7digital have worked with many Consumer Electronics manufacturers to either pre-install the 7digital app, such as with HTC,[3] or to develop a white label app for the manufacturer.
Services [edit]
7digital operates as a platform, offering both direct to consumer (D2C) music download stores and as a business to business (B2B) service for digital media partners. The 7digital API (Application Programming Interface) allows developers to use and license the 7digital technology platform and catalog of content to create music or e-book websites, applications and devices or to integrate music into existing services.
7digital.com [edit]
7digital.com is an online digital music store, one of the UK's first when launched in 2004.[2] As of June 2012[update], the catalogue consists of more than 19 million tracks, all without DRM restrictions. The 7digital.com direct to consumer music download stores offer a catalog of high quality digital music from the four major labels and independent aggregators in Europe, North America and parts of Asia Pacific. The 7digital Locker stores the users' music purchases in the cloud for access to download from any device. Users have the option to download their purchases as zip files or by using the 7digital download manager to input directly into iTunes. 7digital.com is platform-agnostic and also accessible from any mobile device using the html5 mobile optimised web store. 7digital's download store and locker are available through the 7digital apps for Android, Windows 7, Blackberry and iPhone.
The 7digital music download stores run weekly promotions with discounts on new albums and catalog titles. The stores also run editorial features including artist interviews, playlists, seasonal features, award pages, and festival pages. In many territories 7digital stores offer weekly free track promotions.
Some milestones for the 7digital.com download stores:
2012 - Site redesign, Windows Phone[4] and Windows 8 apps went live, 20 million tracks in the catalogue
2011 - 7digital iOS and Android apps went live,[5] First FLAC HD download offered by a major retailer with Radiohead's King Of Limbs,[6] 7digital Essentials exclusive compilations released, new rights acquired for stores in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore[7]
Official and native music store of the BlackBerry PlayBook (tablet)
2010 - 10 million tracks in the catalogue, consumer promotion with 02 in the UK
2009 - New consumer stores for USA,[8] Canada, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, The Netherlands and Finland, 5 million tracks in the catalogue, exclusive Portishead and Amnesty International promotion, Blackberry app went live[9]
2008 - New consumer stores for Italy, Portugal and Austria, first European store to offer WMG catalogue in MP3 DRM-free,[10] Sony catalogue is delivered DRM-free.[11]
2007 - New stores for France, Ireland and Spain, announce 1,000, 000 users, buy links added to Last.FM, Became the first digital retailer to offer DRM-free back catalogues for The Rolling Stones.,[12] Pink Floyd,[13] and Radiohead.[14]
2006 - EMI's catalog becomes DRM-free, new store added for Germany
2005 – UK consumer store added with Locker for re-downloads of purchased music
Mobile stores [edit]
7digital has mobile apps for Android, Blackberry, iOS and Windows as well as a mobile optimized store available on any devices.
Through a number of stategic parterships, 7digital is also a default music store for tablets by Toshiba, HP, Samsung and Blackberry.
Regional versions [edit]
7digital.com is available with localised features such as local currency, language and catalog throughout Europe, North America and parts of Asia Pacific.
These flagship stores are as follows: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The United Kingdom and The United States.
Availability of localized DRM-free download stores [edit]
| Store | EMI | Sony | Universal | Warner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Germany | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Ireland | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| France | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Spain | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Austria | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Switzerland | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Belgium | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Netherlands | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Portugal | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Italy | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| US | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Canada | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Sweden | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Norway | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Finland | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| India | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Thailand | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Malaysia | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Australia | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| New Zealand | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Cyprus | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Bulgaria | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Greece | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Lithuania | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Latvia | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Poland | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Slovakia | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Hungary | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Romania | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Slovenia | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Iceland | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
7digital's Indiestore launched in early 2006, and allowed unsigned artists and independent labels create their own digital music download store for free. In the United Kingdom this led to the first single by an unsigned artist (Koopa) appearing in the Top 40 through download sales alone. More than 95% percent of the Koopa's single's chart eligible sales were made via Indiestore or 7digital.com.[15] The Indiestore was discontinued in 2010.[16]
Samsung [edit]
Samsung selected 7digital as the suppliers to deliver their musical content beginning with the Music Hub version 1. This version provided downloads and synchronisation for offline use. The relationship continued with the replacement of Music Hub 1 by the parallel launch of Music Hub 2.0 and 3.0 dependent on the territory that the handset was designated for.
The introduction of the new Music Hub required extensive engineering works for 7digital, as streaming was a key requirement for the replacement Music Hub. These included establishing a global Content Delivery Network in order to ensure that the streaming element of the service would be able to cope with the increased loading that Samsung's client base would bring.
Collaboration with Spotify [edit]
Spotify users from the UK, France, Norway, Finland, Spain, The Netherlands and Sweden were able to purchase tracks to download (if available) from 7digital.[17] This was done by right-clicking in Windows, or control-clicking in Mac OS X, and selecting the 'Buy From' link. However Spotify launched their own purchase service during 2011 which replaced 7digital.
Songbird [edit]
Songbird, the open source audio player and web browser, uses 7digital's music store. Purchases from 7digital are automatically downloaded to the Songbird library.[18] The service is also able to generate recommendations based on a user's Songbird library.
Collaboration with Canonical [edit]
7digital is collaborating with Canonical Ltd. to provide the Ubuntu One Music Store in the Ubuntu Operating System starting from Ubuntu 10.04.[19]
References [edit]
- ^ "7digital Agrees Terms of $8.5 Million Investment to Capitalise on Rising Digital Media Demand". Archived from the original on 4 March 2008. Retrieved 25 February 2008.
- ^ a b Gibson, Owen (28 January 2008). "UK iTunes rival 7digital to hit US and Europe". The Guardian (London). Archived from the original on 29 January 2008. Retrieved 25 February 2008.
- ^ O'Hear, Steve. "Make Hay While The Sun Shines: Music Download Service 7digital Riding The Coattails Of HTC". Retrieved 11 July 2012.
- ^ Sawers, Paul. "7digital brings its MP3 download service to Windows Phone". The Next Web. Retrieved 13 April 2012.
- ^ O'hear, Steve. "7digital opens its music download store to Android". TechCrunch. Retrieved 4 March 2011.
- ^ Peoples, Glenn. "Radiohead's 'King of Limbs' Offered in Premium 24-bit FLAC Format by 7digital". Billboard. Retrieved 8 May 2011.
- ^ Russel, John. "Digital music service 7digital moves into Asia-Pacific". The Next Web. Retrieved 18 October 2011.
- ^ Healey, Jon. "European import 7digital takes on iTunes in the U.S.". The LA Times. Retrieved 5 Octoberv2010.
- ^ Greere, Duncan. "BlackBerry music app unveiled by 7digital". Pocket Lint.
- ^ Simon Perry (2008-03-05). "Warner Drop DRM On 7Digital". Digital-Lifestyles. Archived from the original on 2008-06-04. Retrieved 2008-03-05.
- ^ Ian Williams (2008-09-16). "7digital goes completely DRM free". Archived from the original on 18 September 2008. Retrieved 2008-09-16.
- ^ "Stones roll out 'DRM-free' albums". Retrieved 25 February 2008.[dead link]
- ^ "7digital to offer all Pink Floyd albums DRM-free". Archived from the original on 12 February 2008. Retrieved 25 February 2008.
- ^ "Radiohead Selling Full Albums Via 7digital Deal". Archived from the original on 4 March 2008. Retrieved 25 February 2008.
- ^ Gibson, Owen (16 January 2007). "A blag or a steal? New rules put unsigned punk band in top 40". The Guardian (London). Archived from the original on 25 January 2008. Retrieved 25 February 2008.
- ^ "Indiestore". Retrieved 21 November 2010.
- ^ "Spotify's free music model - binge until your ears are fat!". Daily Music Guide. Archived from the original on 29 April 2009. Retrieved 2009-04-16.
- ^ "Songbirds Integrated Services". Retrieved 2009-08-25.
- ^ "Ubuntu One Music Store coming in Ubuntu 10.04 powered by 7digital". Retrieved 2010-02-20.
