7digital Blog

As our CEO, Ben Drury, is on the cover of the Mobile Marketing Magazine this month, we thought it was a good time to talk about mobile apps. The last few weeks have seen a surge of music focused apps, covering everything from viewing to videos and photos of One Direction through augmented reality, to accessing exclusive content from The XX. One even helps those listeners who are trying to get that little bit fitter before Christmas descends.

Terms like ‘innovation’ and ‘immersive experience’ are thrown around constantly. While we’re not huge fans of clichés, we are big fans of the concepts behind them.

Our favourite has been the 18 Months app from Calvin Harris, which provides Android and iOS users with the entire 18 Months album for free – but with a catch. You have to keep dancing if you want to hear the music. Once you stop dancing (or at least stop moving) so does the music, unless you fork out some cash for it. The idea is to get those fans who’ve brought a few singles to complete their album – and what better motivation to buy a dance album than to get people dancing. Tongue-in-cheek as it might be, it does address the decline in physical albums compared to growth digital album sales. It won’t work for everyone of course, but it’s a darn good idea.

The explosion of connected devices (which could be your TV, games console, or even a fridge if you fancy) is creating a previously unheard of choice for listening to your favourite artists and bands.

This is naturally good news for music fans, but it should be filling the hearts of developers and labels with joy too. Labels can do anything from encourage more track downloads to complete the digital album of a particular artist, to develop all new marketing and revenue streams. And to do this, they’ll need developers to create a new app, who’ll in turn bring in some cash for themselves.

There’s still plenty of room for good old fashioned tracks and albums, but it’s very encouraging to see the industry embracing some of the new opportunities and pushing app development forward.

We’re all nursing sore heads and feet today, after a great night out at the AIM Independent Music Awards…

Now in their second year, the awards were set up by the Association of Independent Music to honour the finest indie artists, albums, events, labels and tastemakers. We were delighted to be part of 2012’s event, as sponsors of ‘Independent Breakthrough of the Year’, and thrilled to see the award go to Alt-J, whose excellent debut, An Awesome Wave, has been a big hit with our customers.

Others celebrating on the night included Enter Shikari, who won Independent ‘Album of the Year’, and 4AD, who were named ‘Best Independent Label’. Orange Juice’s Edwyn Collins and Mute’s Daniel Miller were also recognised, picking up honorary awards for ‘Outstanding Contribution to Music’ and ‘Pioneer’ respectively. You can see the full list of winners on the official AIM Awards website.

The event was presented by BBC 6 Music’s Steve Lamacq and BBC Radio 1’s Huw Stevens, and live entertainment came courtesy of Frankie and the Heartstrings, Land Observations and Big Deal.

All this week, the nominees for ‘Independent Breakthrough of the Year’ are each donating a free song for your listening pleasure. To take advantage, and to find out more about the nominees, check out our AIM Feature.

Up next? The Barclaycard Mercury Prize on 1st November…

Through inviting progressive, cross-industry professionals, academics, musicians and Berklee students, the Rethink Music Conference in Boston highlighted the friction and progress of our current industry climate into two days of high-level discussions. For tensions and concerns surrounding artist development and marketing, global licensing and the future of the music business there needs to be various forums like this and we were very happy to be a part of it. Keynote speaker and marketing guru Seth Godin started the conference with a compelling and inspiring look at the music business’ rise to ubiquity out of what was historically a culture of scarcity. He offered enlightening but easily graspable advice to the general crowd to start “marketing to the weird” and pushed for a focus on “finding your tribe” for an alternative look at success in the mass market. Although his speech was directed towards musicians it was clearly ‘rethinking’ the culture of the industry as a whole and provided a great start to the discussions. Other interesting conversations came from those looking forward to the Musical Ecosystem in 2015, GZA on Staying Relevant and the group Finding a Future in the Clouds.

Hackers’ Weekend

Prior to the two days of panels, The Hackers’ Weekend invited the developer community to take center stage to present their own ‘rethinking’ of music applications. At the end of 24 hours of intense coding on various music companies’ APIs, these young talents come up with a number of great ideas mainly focused around playlists, lyrics and social engagement. The winning hacks were: Kinect Bomba – where dancing in front of a Kinect controls the music, The Byrds and The Bee Gees – allowing a playful application that highlights songs popular at the time of conception and Concert Playlist Generator – helping live music fans easily listen to tracks on Spotify from upcoming gigs tracked through Songkick – perfect for pre-concert listening. 7digital was partial to the application Hiptapes, a music marketing app that allows artists to create a unique QR code to link to dynamic content for concert calendar and artist merch. We loved what this does for artists in the increasingly important DIY marketing landscape and the possibilities for fan activity with numerous options of engagement. We awarded the Hiptapes developers with a discount off our commercial API licence to help them get this off the ground should they chose to turn it into a real business. Here’s to forward thinking innovation!

Licensing Challenges in a Global Community

While music licensing can easily be a cure for insomnia, this post-lunch panel discussion on the topic managed to keep everyone’s attention focused on friction points, challenges and solutions across publishing, data, and settlement to content rights holders. Everyone agreed that a fair and equitable payment for intellectual property is the end goal, but there were many perspectives on which problems could and could not easily be solved. The panel included Richard Conlon, Senior Vice President Corporate Strategy, Communications & New Media at BMI, Steven Masur, Senior Partner at Masur Law, Cathy Merenda, Vice President of Music Publishing for Twentieth Century Fox, Vickie Nauman, President, North America for 7digital, Philippe Perreaux Founder of Rightsform and Rightsclearing, Jay Rosenthal, Senior Vice President & General Counsel for the National Music Publishers’ Association, and was moderated by Don Gorder, Chair and Founder of the Music Business / Management Department at Berklee College of Music.

After agreeing that the main licensing snarls revolve around data management, lack of resource and cross-border rights, all of the panelists spoke candidly about the extremely difficult realities of these problems. Jay Rosenthal noted that publishers seek faster payout and more transparency from labels, leading Steve Nasur to explain that the labels often have unfinished deals due to lack of resource. Cathy Merenda recalled returning a Fox check for a Beatles record they didn’t own the rights to and their dependence on intermediaries, and Richard Conlon echoed concerns of doing business in various regulatory environments and across borders in an increasingly globalised world. Our own Vickie Nauman commented that high-complexity/low-margin business affects the viability of new music services, explaining how many “get stuck in the tar-pit of licensing.” She went on to explain how 7digital works as both a licensor and licensee allowing new services and start-ups more ramp up time for their projects while admitting that 7digital doesn’t really eliminate the complexity, “we just take it on”.

Is there a global solution to all this tangled mess? Progress is being made – deals are being done, and thought-leaders continue to identify both problems and potential solutions. But there is still a lot of work ahead. In the meantime, companies passionate about music continue to plug away at licensing to keep up with the advancement of technology and consumer demand. It is reassuring that music is in high demand and should increase payments for rights holders including artists!

London, UK, 13 April 2012 – 7digital today announced the launch of the new 7digital mobile application for Windows Phone devices.

The new app brings 7digital’s download store and music player to Windows Phones handsets, giving users access to 7digital’s 18 million strong catalogue of high quality MP3 tracks.

Users can browse, preview, purchase and download music to their Windows Phone, anytime, anywhere. As with all 7digital’s apps, previously purchased music can be synced from a user’s personal 7digital cloud storage space to their Windows Phone and any other devices with a 7digital app installed.

The app takes advantage of the native Windows Phone OS, recommendations and featured content appear on a panorama style interface. Live Tiles have also been integrated to allow users to pin their favourite artists, tracks and albums to the start screen.

The Windows app joins 7digital’s existing range of mobile applications for Android, iPhone/iOS and BlackBerry platforms. 7digital now has over 2 million active users on mobile devices, allowing users to download and sync their 7digital music collection across any device they own.

Ben Drury, CEO 7digital comments, “The 7digital mobile applications allow our customers to access their music however, whenever and through whichever device platform they choose.”

“The new 7digital Windows Phone application adds to our philosophy of being a truly platform agnostic digital music service. With the addition of the Windows Phone app, we enable music fans to purchase music and access their entire music collection on all their devices, anytime, anywhere.”

The 7digital Windows Phone application is available from the Windows Marketplace in a number of territories including UK, US, Canada, Germany, France, Spain Italy and Ireland. Further information on 7digital’s mobile applications is available at 7digital.com/mobile.

The 7digital team in attendance at this year’s SXSW were an industrious bunch, kept busy by the usual mix of wonderful music, media mayhem and back-to-back meetings. Representing 7digital in Austin, TX this time were CEO and Co-Founder Ben Drury, President of North America Vickie Nauman and North American Marketing Manager Anna Siegel. With Ben as a panel speaker, Vickie a panel moderator and Anna off meeting the labels, the group saw a myriad of people, heard a number of great new ideas and were fully engaged from morning to night. There was even an appearance from one of 7digital’s Development Team, though he was on a much-envied, music-appreciation adventure at the festival!

The week was a mix of innovation (lead by the folks at the ‘Interactive’ week), and complex music-engagement strategies and business plans, which bubbled throughout the ‘Music’ portion of the event. During the festival 7digital announced a major upgrade to the premier Android App and we heard a lot of positive reflections on how 7digital has helped partners like BlackBerry, Imagination Technologies, and T-Mobile build music into their environments more easily.

As many music companies are experiencing consolidation (Universal and EMI, Fontana and InGrooves, IODA and The Orchard with Sony), there were many others reaching important milestones, including Music Metric, Last.fm, BandPages, Turntable.fm, Rdio, Mog, Rhapsody and many more legal services driving the future of music. We met a number of people bridging the music and tech worlds with interesting location-based and social media-driven music discovery apps. There was no sign of the next big ‘Twitter’ or ‘Facebook’ this year, but it did seem the quantity of start-ups going for social media-based platforms was at an all time high.

Vickie Nauman had a chance to sit down with The AP as an expert eye witness at the event! Watch her video interview by clicking here.

Music in Devices – What is working?

Vickie Nauman moderated a panel of experts to uncover the truth behind how music really works on devices. She was joined by Eric London, Sr. Product Manager, Music & Personalization for T-Mobile, Aaron Levitz, Director of Content Acquisition & Entertainment for Blackberry/RIM, Carl Rholing, VP Business Development for TuneIn and Pete Downton, Partner of Imagination Technologies. They spoke to a packed room in a discussion focused on the various levels of user engagement on the pyramid of music consumption.

The high profile companies represented on the panel all revealed different motivations for including music in their service. The struggles around similar issues have evolved music on device strategy to include varying product enhancements on the quest for active users. For T-Mobile this includes carrier billing, whereas Blackberry is tapping into the strength of their BBM network. A Billboard.biz article on the panel recalled the myriad of complaints echoed about the hurdles for bringing the world of technology and music rights holders together. The main takeaway, however, would be a more positive acknowledgement of the accomplishments made by this collective of problem-solvers through working together, thinking progressively about user engagement and overcoming what can seem like impossible tasks. The shameless plug for 7digital’s open API entered the conversation as a flexible B2B solution for any company wanting to tackle this new frontier. The panel as a group shed light on where improvements can be made for music on devices and what Apple-outsiders are doing to tackle them.

For more information on the panel, please read Billboard’s full review.

Getting Under The Hood: Music Operations For CTOs and Developers

Ben Drury was brought on board to help teach the woes of metadata management and reporting with moderator Bill Wilson, VP, Digital Strategy & Business Dev digitalmusic.org, Ted Cohen, Managing Partner for TAG Strategic and Josh Builder, CTO for The Orchard. Josh’s thorough Powerpoint presentation tackled everything from UPC generation, XMLs and ISRCs, to hard drives and DDEX, and he lead a discussion which ultimately warned against tackling the metadata monster alone. As Ben Drury explained, there is a tendency for companies to underestimate the labour associated with working on metadata ingestion, and Josh warned the group of the complexities of encoding high quality XML and accurate data. Although those in the audience were heavily engaged throughout, asking questions and taking notes, there were several sighs of relief when both companies offered their hand at a solution; through using aggregators or distributors like The Orchard for encoding and deliveries, and companies like 7digital to build consumer-facing music services on their public API, one can indeed avoid the monster.

Now to the music…

Though historically, SXSW started out with a focus on indie-rock, you can now find a huge range of genres represented at the festival, which seems to increasingly add complexity to the scheduling process. On a nightly basis you could catch everything from heavy metal to hip hop and this year there seemed to be a major influx of electronic and dance artists. Skrillex headlined several parties and the 7digital team even found themselves at a well-attended UK dubstep event one night.

Anna’s favorite showcases: Matthew Dear, Cults, Kindness, Alabama Shakes, Temper Trap, Tanlines, The Pinstripes, Quantic & Alice Russell and KP & the Boom Booms.
Vickie’s favorite showcases: Nada Surf’s acoustic set, Temper Trap, Alabama Shakes, DJ Baby Chino, David Garza, Fanfarlo, The Punch Brothers, Skrillex and Tom Morello’s impromptu guitar set in the street!

SxSW, Austin, Texas and London, UK, 13th March 2012 – 7digital  today announces a major update to version 4.0 of its Android app, and updates to the company’s mobile apps.

Android app - Version 4.0

The updated 7digital Android app features an intuitive new swipe navigation, additional recommendations and featured music, hardware acceleration and enhancements. The updated app is designed to take full advantage of the new functionality in Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), including the Android Beam Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. Using Beam, 7digital users can share music playlists by touching their Android 4.0 smartphones or tablets together. Playlists will consist of 30 second track previews, unless both users have the tracks already downloaded.

7digital now has over 2 million active users on mobile devices, with over 800,000 installs of its Android app alone. 7digital is a truly cross-platform service, with apps for the Android, BlackBerry and iOS platforms and an HTML5 mobile store.

7digital’s iOS app has been updated to support iOS 5 and various performance and user experience enhancements. 7digital for mobile web continues to be upgraded so users can experience 7digital on any device, even without an app. The app updates bring 7digital’s high-quality music download experience to the broadest range of mobile devices and countries in the market, giving users access to 7digital’s 18 million strong catalogue of high quality tracks.

The 7digital Windows Phone app, with an integrated Metro user interface, has also been completed and will soon be available at the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Ben Drury, CEO 7digital comments, “We’re seeing great momentum on mobile devices and updating our existing apps, and launching on the Windows Phone platform, will ensure this continues.

“With Google buying Motorola and Amazon focused on the Kindle Fire device, we’re the only truly agnostic, independent and cross-platform music download service that allows music lovers to purchase music and access their entire collection on all their devices without being locked to one platform.”

7digital technology is also pre-installed on devices including Samsung’s Galaxy and Wave series and RIM’s BlackBerry and PlayBook devices.

Drury and Vickie Nauman, President of 7digital-North America, will both speak on panels on Wednesday, March 14 at the SXSW Music Conference in Austin, TX. Drury will be featured in the NARM/digitalmusic.org Start Up Academy as part of “Getting Under the Hood: Music Operations for CTOs and Developers.” Naumam will be on the panel “Music in Devices – What is Working?” In addition, on March 22 Nauman will be at the Canadian Music Week in Toronto, Canada to speak on “Distribution & Profit: Does Music’s ‘Victimless Crime’ Finally Pay?”

An update to our iPhone app has just been released. Here’s what’s new in Version 1.1:

• Improved stability
• Support for iOS 5
• Compliance with iOS data storage guidelines
• Fixes for sort order (Aa, Bb, Cc and ‘The’)
• Fix for downloads over WiFi (now uses download/track)
• Track number and length added to release details screen
• Improved error handling during the sync process
• Music is paused when headphones are unplugged
• Updated app icon

7digital for iPhone allows you to wirelessly sync your 7digital music for offline listening. This means that you can now hop onto the 7digital mobile web store, buy a track, and find it instantly on your mobile device. Optimised for iPhone and iPod Touch, 7digital for iPhone also works in standard app mode on iPads.

7digital for iPhone is available to download from the App Store now.

7digital has upgraded its flagship 7digital.com website to incorporate new HTML5 technology, including browser based music streaming.

A refreshed user interface and selected new features are available to 7digital customers globally from today. The upgraded site does not have all features enabled in all territories – the fully featured site will launch globally in February 2012.

New features to the 7digital.com site include:

• HTML5 audio technology for wide-ranging browser and device compatibility
• Upgraded user interface with an emphasis on page-loading and browsing speed
• New enhanced search engine
• New 7digital Player mode enables streaming of a user’s purchased 7digital music collection, allowing music lovers to listen to their music from any web browser in any location, as well as download. This feature is currently only available on preview to UK users, but will be available in other territories soon
• Updated 7digital Locker that continues to allow users to access and download / re-download their purchased 7digital music collection to a computer or mobile device through the 7digital Android, iPhone and BlackBerry apps.

We’ve seen significant growth in album and track sales during 2011, with Adele’s album 21 and song ‘Someone Like You’ leading the bestsellers lists.

In 2011, mobile sales accounted for 50% of 7digital downloads globally. The best selling artist of 2011 was Adele with her album 21 and track ‘Someone Like You’.  Red Hot Chili Peppers,  Coldplay and Snow Patrol also featured in the top 20 albums. A comprehensive list of the top 20 albums and tracks of 2011 is provided below.

Mobile growth has been driven by 7digital applications being pre-loaded on millions of devices from consumer electronics partners, including Samsung, RIM, Sony Ericsson, Philips and Toshiba. Updated 7digital apps for Android handsets and tablets, BlackBerry handsets and the launch of an HTML5 mobile site also contributed to mobile growth.

The coming months will see 7digital’s reach widen within the mobile space with the launch of a Windows phone app. A 7digital app for the iPhone, allowing users to sync purchased tracks with their device, also became available at the end of 2011.

Ben Drury, CEO 7digital comments, “We’ve seen another year of strong growth in 2011, especially from smartphone and tablet devices. Sales from mobile devices rose significantly year-on-year for the final two weeks of 2011, rising from approximately 10% in 2010 to 50% in 2011.”

“Our approach to be an open, agnostic digital content partner to the consumer electronics industry is really paying off. We know that consumers want access to their music collection on the device of their choice, anytime, anywhere and we’re helping enable that. 7digital’s catalogue of over 17 million high quality DRM-free MP3 tracks and open API platform mean we are an attractive partner for device manufacturers.”

Top 20 Albums 2011*

1. Adele – 21
2. Red Hot Chili Peppers – I’m With You
3. Coldplay – Mylo Xyloto
4. Snow Patrol – Fallen Empires
5. Rihanna – Loud
6. Bruno Mars – Doo-Wops & Hooligans
7. Elbow – build a rocket boys!
8. Foo Fighters – Wasting Light
9. PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
10. Beyoncé – 4
11. Ed Sheeran – +
12. Florence + The Machine – Ceremonials
13. Michael Bublé – Christmas
14. Lady GaGa – Born This Way
15. LMFAO – Sorry For Party Rocking
16. Lil Wayne – Tha Carter IV
17. Chase & Status – No More Idols
18. Bon Iver – Bon Iver
19. Arctic Monkeys – Suck It And See
20. Mumford & Sons – Sigh No More

Top 20 Tracks 2011

1. Adele – Someone Like You
2. LMFAO / GoonRock / Lauren Bennett – Party Rock Anthem
3. Adele – Rolling In The Deep
4. Pitbull feat. Ne-Yo, Afrojack & Nayer – Give Me Everything
5. Maroon 5 / Christina Aguilera – Moves Like Jagger
6. Rihanna / Calvin Harris – We Found Love
7. Lady GaGa – Born This Way
8. Bruno Mars – Grenade
9. Jennifer Lopez / Pitbull – On The Floor
10. LMFAO – Sexy And I Know It
11. Adele – Set Fire To The Rain
12. Christina Perri – Jar Of Hearts
13. Bruno Mars – The Lazy Song
14. Rihanna – S&M
15. Jessie J / B.o.B. – Price Tag
16. Lady GaGa – The Edge Of Glory
17. Snoop Dogg vs. David Guetta – Sweat (Snoop Dogg vs. David Guetta)
18. Ed Sheeran – The A Team
19. Foster The People – Pumped Up Kicks
20. Katy Perry – Firework

* Note: the lists provided reflect sales from across 7digital’s mobile applications and web-based global stores in 37 territories, which include the UK, US, Canada, Europe and Singapore.

7digital will be expanding its North American operation and opening US offices beginning January 2012 in response to its growing business.

Leading the stateside effort will be newly appointed President of 7digital North America, Vickie Nauman, who has been serving as Vice President since Q4 2009 when the company acquired its US and Canadian music rights. Nauman will oversee business development, strategy, partnerships, label relations, and marketing. As a partner-friendly company, 7digital seeks to expand its growing base of clients and strategic partners that currently includes T-Mobile USA, HP, RIM, Samsung, Songbird, AOL’s Winamp, and Fantrail. Through the use of 7digital’s platform, hundreds of worldwide clients have built music initiatives on 7digital’s API platform (Application Programming Interface), designed to simplify the integration of music into third party efforts.

“The last two years have been full of constant change in the digital landscape, and we’ve been steadily building our profile and partnerships in the US and Canada,” comments Ben Drury 7digital CEO and co-founder, “Vickie has led these efforts and will now lead an expanded presence with new staff and office. We look forward to being able to provide enhanced services to our customers and partners in 2012.”

Commenting on the North American business, Nauman says, “The US market has its own dynamics and needs, and as the digital music market evolves, it’s getting more difficult to find neutral, strategic partners, which is precisely the role we fulfill. We have now established a significant number of North American-based clients as well as a growing business selling 320K MP3s on 7digital.com. Everyone wants a best-in-class experience, a complete music catalog, and a mix of music ownership and cloud-based services, and we are uniquely positioned to deliver this globally.”

Nauman joined 7digital from Sonos, where she established global partnerships between wireless digital music system for the home with music companies Last.fm, Spotify, SiriusXM, RadioTime, Pandora, Rhapsody, Napster, and Deezer. Prior to Sonos, Nauman managed an international and media-focused consultancy CrossBorderWorks, created the online services for boutique Seattle radio station KEXP, served on the product team of MusicNet at RealNetworks, and earned a 2006 MBA through the London School of Economics, New York University, and HEC-Paris, in the collaborative executive program TRIUM.

All technology and platform operations will remain in the company’s London headquarters and a small team will manage all partnerships and business in the North American market. Nauman will remain based in Los Angeles, and the team will likely have presence on both the west and east coast as well as maintain its dedicated North American team in London.