7digital

Office / s in

  • Cologne, Germany

Line

  • Ben Drury, CEO
  • James Kane, CTO

7digital is a British provider of digital marketing solutions. Focus of its activities are manufacture and operation of customized download sales platforms for media content from artists and labels. In the public perception is, however, rather 7digital for its online music service, and self- marketing platform indie bookstore known for acts without a record deal. 7digital has been awarded a Red Herring 100 Europe Award 2007.

  • 2.2.1 Availability DRM-free content from major labels

Business

Founded 7digital in January 2004 by former dotmusic operators Ben Drury and James Kane. The company is headquartered in London, United Kingdom.

In the first half of 2008 could 7digital in its online stores compared with the same period a revenue increase from the 300 percent recorded in March 2008 and reached 1.2 million registered users. In the UK, 7digital is the second largest online music service.

Offer

An essential difference from competitors is the fact that 7digital is not exclusively offering a full product range with your own company name as an identification mark. Rather, the company commonly referred to download portals and connections in appearance (as of 8/2008 ) occurs in the vast majority of the more than 1000 as the " Stores" by name only as technical and administrative services. In this function operates 7digital example, the German music download portal EMI, provides the download functionality for last.fm much more willing

Since April 2010, the Linux distribution Ubuntu 7digital integrated into the supplied innately media player Rhythmbox to ensure an iTunes -like integration into the desktop environment. It is thereby settled together with the also integrated in the system file hosting service Ubuntu One.

Formats

The stores operated by 7digital translated at an early stage to a multi-format approach. While other deals have often set to a single file format, can be found in stores 7digital often the opportunity to choose ( depending on the repertoire policy of the relevant license owner ) between WMA, AAC, or MP3; the quality levels available are ranked in the audio range of 192 kbit / s 256 kbit / s to 320 kbit / s Also videos are usually held in more than one format, mostly WMV and MP4 at different resolutions.

The well-meaning per se approach ensures occasionally for criticism, especially in stores with repertoire from different vendors, as it is, apparently for consumers not transparent ( enough) why some titles are available in fully usable MP3 format, while others are only in limited use formats such as WMA or AAC.

Format and quality level ( resolution / data rate), however, are each reported visible on the product pages. MP3 available titles are highlighted with an orange MP3 logo.

Depending on the license owners are titles on offer by 7digital with or without DRM (English acronym for Digital Rights Management, ie copy protection or use limitation / s) available. Due to the above reasons, it may well be worthwhile to pay close attention to the format markings on the products available there.

More

  • The center was started in 2007 new full-line stores offer the possibility of a direct search for titles on the format. Effectively, the option to not only show MP3 files, for consumers the ability to filter DRM - free content from the offer. The proportion of DRM -free repertoire (MP3) is well over 80% of the total supply (as of 8/2008 ).
  • 7digital also operates in cooperation with the Computec Media AG, the download portal Nowdio, in which only DRM-free media content is available for purchase and download.

Catalog equipment

In his own stores offers 7digital repertoire of all majors and a variety of independent labels in the form of individual tracks, albums, etc..

The following license agreements are particularly noteworthy:

  • Beginning of 2007 - The complete catalog of EMI is without DRM restrictions available.
  • August 2007 - First partner for the online sales of 24 albums of The Rolling Stones, for the period 1971-2005 without DRM restrictions.
  • September 2007 - First partner for online sales of Pink Floyd's entire back catalog without DRM restrictions.
  • September 2007 - First partner for the online sales of Radiohead's entire back catalog without DRM restrictions. It can only be downloaded entire albums, not individual tracks.
  • March 2008 - Warner Music presents its entire music catalog in MP3 format to offer.
  • September 2008, Sony BMG wins 7digital.com the last of the four major music companies for the conversion of the offer to MP3, making it the first European download providers which makes the catalogs from all major labels DRM - free available. First, this conversion takes place only in the UK, but they should be implemented by the end of 2008 outside the UK.

Availability DRM-free content from major labels

Payment methods

The payment of purchases is possible with credit card, ClickandBuy or PayPal.

7digital offers an à la carte downloads on, that is the ability to purchase products individually as desired. Subscription models, etc. are not currently part of the offer.

Access restrictions

  • 7digital online stores can be used using only a web browser and do not require additional software (as opposed to services such as the iTunes Store, which is available only with the iTunes program from Apple).
  • Sales areas are the UK, Ireland, France, Spain and Germany; Austria, Switzerland and the United States will follow soon (as of August 2008). Access to the country-specific stores is usually limited to IP addresses of the respective country; that is, at 7digital.de example, only customers shopping, going through a German ISP into the net.

Trivia

Initially, all contained prices the number 7, which was intended as a nod to the company name. Albums cost, for example, € 10.77. Mid-2007 was drained from it.

Types of business entity Chief Executive Officer Chief technology officer Independent record label Subscription business model
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