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.

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?”

Our brand new application allows Android tablet users in over 20 countries to access our catalogue of over 16 million high quality MP3 tracks. The layout has been optimised for tablets running the Android Honeycomb operating system, which mirrors the new 7digital online store design.

Homepage

The 7digital music store, now optimised for Android Honeycomb Tablets

The grid format display of the homepage makes it even easier to browse and discover new music. All the latest releases, promotional products and staff recommendations are updated on a regular basis by the 7digital editorial team. Browse through the content by swiping across the screen, and tap on a product to be taken to the artist page.

Preview and browse music at the same time

Preview and browse music at the same time

One of our favourite new functionalities is the brand new 7digital Player, which allows you to preview music and browse the site simultaneously.

Improved search performance and relevancy

mproved search performance and relevancy

Our updated search function is not only over 10 times faster than its previous incarnation, it’s a lot more accurate too; making it easier for you to find the artists you love.

Wireless syncing

With a 7digital account you’re able to wirelessly sync all your music purchases between your phone, tablet and PC. What does that mean? Well, imagine that you purchased Ryan Adams’ new album on your laptop first thing in the morning, but didn’t have time to download the music before you left the house; you can simply open up the 7digital app, or log in to our mobile site, to download and listen to the album on the bus into work.

For further information regarding 7digital for mobile, visit www.7digital.com/mobile

The 7digital app for Android is available to download from the Android Market

July 21, 2011 – 7digital is offering HP webOS users an integrated music experience on the new HP TouchPad, where users can discover, buy and listen to music. 7digital’s full track download application is now available in the webOS App Catalog on HP TouchPad. This application is a Tier One featured app built specifically for the webOS platform.

7digital MP3 Music lets HP TouchPad users browse current charts, preview the latest tracks and discover, purchase and download high quality, DRM-free MP3 music from a catalog of over 14 million songs directly to the device.

“HP is a worldwide leader in consumer electronics and we are very pleased to deliver the 7digital global music experience to their sleek designed and highly functional tablet device,” comments Ben Drury, the CEO and co-founder of 7digital. “Through the use of 7digital’s platform, HP TouchPad users will have an optimized music experience at launch.”

“High-quality applications and music are essential to the HP TouchPad,” said Richard Kerris, vice president of webOS Worldwide Developer Relations, HP. “7digital’s deep catalog of music and robust platform will help us bring a great music experience to our customers.”

The 7digital platform consists of a suite of global music rights and technology features, which are made available to partners through 7digital’s Application Programming Interface (API). The API provides 3rd parties such as HP with a simpler way to leverage fully licensed music to create a customized, best-in-class front-end experience.

The 7digital MP3 Music app for the TouchPad features:

7digital MP3 Music app for webOS is available in all countries where TouchPad is currently shipping, including the United States, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Germany and France. Currency and pricing for track download purchases is localized for users in each region.

More informationabout HP TouchPad is available at www.hp.com/touchpad.

London, UK and Waterloo, ON – Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM; TSX: RIM) and 7digital today announced that the 7digital Music Store will come pre-installed* on the BlackBerry® PlayBook™.

The 7digital Music Store will give BlackBerry PlayBook users access to 7digital’s catalogue of over 13 million high quality (320kbps) MP3s. BlackBerry PlayBook users will be able to search for tracks, albums and artists and preview tracks before making a purchase. Users can also discover new music through 7digital’s recommendation technology. Prices for BlackBerry PlayBook users will match the prices on 7digital.com, with individual tracks and albums priced in a customer’s local currency.

Ben Drury, CEO 7digital comments, “We’re really excited to be working with RIM to bring the 7digital experience to the BlackBerry PlayBook. RIM has created an incredible tablet with premium multimedia features and together we are delivering a truly exceptional music experience for mobile users, offering content that is extremely easy to discover, purchase and use.

“We currently have the largest international footprint of any MP3 digital music seller and we look forward to expanding our business with RIM throughout the year.”

“The 7digital Music Store is a perfect complement to the high-performance BlackBerry PlayBook, providing users with fast searches and downloads, and a slick interface that makes it very easy to discover, purchase and enjoy music,” said Alistair Mitchell, Vice President, BBM Platform & Integrated Services. “We are thrilled to be working with 7digital to provide BlackBerry PlayBook users with access to an amazing catalog of 13 million tracks.”

The BlackBerry PlayBook tablet running the 7digital Music Store application will be previewed this week at the South by South West conference in Austin, Texas.

At yesterday’s 7digital update event we announced our partnership with Samsung to power their Music Hub service on the newly released GALAXY Tab tablet.

Samsung GALAXY Tab

The Music hub is a native Android application built by Samsung using 7digital’s open API platform.  Users can search, discover, preview, purchase and download tracks via the store’s unique, graphically rich on-screen interface.  It has been developed on the Android 2.2 operating system and the service will be available in 30 European countries and North America.

“The partnership with 7digital has enabled Samsung to create a digital music experience tailored to meet the needs of GALAXY Tab users,” according to Samsung.  “The power of 7digital’s open APIs combined with their extensive music catalogue instantly gives  GALAXY Tab users access to one of the most comprehensive music services in the world, allowing  them to quickly and easily search, discover, preview and purchase tracks and albums directly on their GALAXY Tab.”

The store application will be pre-installed on devices in 30 European countries and North America.  Tracks are available in the MP3 format with the standard format being 320kbps MP3.

Read the full press release.

On the 31st floor of the Centre Point building in central London we held our annual update event today.

Ben Drury, 7digital’s CEO, outlined a number of exciting announcements, not only our portfolio of mobile apps and services, but also new partnerships from the Consumer Electronics market.

Ben provided a review of the last 12 months, we have been busy, here are some of the headlines:

• We now have coverage in 30 countries
• Over 11m tracks in our catalogue
• HMV took a 50% stake in 7digital last year
• HMV Digital, powered by 7digital,  launched in the UK and Canada
• Launched ebook delivery for Waterstone’s.  We can process and deliver ePUB and PDF files
• New partners over the past 12 months include Spotify, Virgin Mobile (Canada), Winamp, Pure and many more.

Joining Ben on stage was Mark Oliver, Chief Executive of O&O who provided an overview of the media and technology market, and the

Ben Drury speaking to the audience about the amazing year 7digital has had.

emerging trends as we transition from web 1.0 to 2.0, outlining the steps the market is taking – an acceleration in technology (Moore’s law doesn’t seem to apply any more!), the macro revenue challenge and the impact on content as we  move to greater connectivity across multiple devices and platforms.

Also joining Ben was Graeme Simons, Business Manager, Digital Products at Toshiba.  Graeme provided an overview of the Toshiba Folio tablet and the music service 7digital is powering.

Today was about new announcements, and we had a lot of them.  Again, here are the headlines:

• The brand new Samsung GALAXY Tab music hub is powered by the 7digital API.  We genuinely feel the GALAXY Tab is a real contender against the iPad
• Toshiba’s new Folio 100 tablet has the the 7digital API at the heart of its music service
• We are now O2′s digital music partner for the UK across multiple platforms – PC, mobile and connected devices.

But it’s not all about tablet PCs and smartphones, recently Pure announced its FlowSongs music service for its Internet radios, such as the Sensia.  It too uses our API along with Shazam’s to create a unique identify, tag and buy service.

There was an update on the BlackBerry app we launched last year.  We are the number 1 music store on BlackBerry, we now have over 500,000  installs, the app is available  in 20 countries,  it supports touchscreen and keyboard models and we are now in a partnership with Shazam.

But we no longer just have the BlackBerry app.  Ling Khor, 7digital’s Consumer Product Manager, joined the stage to formally announce a new raft of mobile services which means we now have the most comprehensive mobile offering in the market.  First was our mobile optimised web store, which is a browser based service accessible on most modern phones as it is mobile OS agnostic, is HTML5 forward compatible for previewing music clips in the browser, scales for tablets and allows users to access their previously purchased tracks.  Available today at http://m.7digital.com

We also launched our Android app, which is available in the Android market today.  Like our BlackBerry app you can choose whether to download over the air or via Wi-Fi, browse, download and play your 7digital purchases.  It also scales up for use on Android tablets, such as the Samsung GALAXY Tab.

We also briefly previewed our new 7digital.com site, which is currently undergoing significant development.  More information will become available over the coming months.

Everything we demonstrated today at the event is built on 7digital’ s open API architecture.  We’ve seen a massive increase  in the use of our API. There are now over 120 active clients and we’re close to 50 million hits on the API per month and it continues to  grow!  We believe in openness and we believe that great value will be created by giving a broad range companies and individuals access to the world’s music in a structured and licensed basis. We want to enable the next Spotify or Last.fm to exist without having to burn through tens of millions of pounds.  For more information on our API visit the developer site.

Just one more thing… a look at the future.

Image recognition mixed with search technology has been around for some time now and we’ve recently been working on our own implementation with Mobile Acuity. Mark Unsworth, Commercial and Strategic Product Manager, outlined the new product which is based on top of the 7digital API and is an Android based application that allows users to take a photograph with a smartphone or tablet and have the album details returned back to the device.  Now, we know this has already been done with CD covers, but we’ll go one better, by allowing users to be able to listen to the preview clips from that album.

But we still wanted to think a bit bigger and we think that we can make music advertising more interactive by allowing users to use magazines, billboards, fly posters and bus hoardings to find music and then purchase it.  More on this soon!

Well, that was this year’s's event.  We’ll see you next year!

7digital's 'Team IFA' relaxing after a hard day of meetings: James, Jim, Dan and Stephen.

Nothing can prepare you for the scale of IFA, the consumer electronics trade show now celebrating it’s 50^th year in Berlin. If I tell you it was huge or enormous or really, really big it doesn’t quite do it justice.  Whatever you are imagining now is much smaller than it actually is.

It is vast.  Even if it weren’t full to the brim with buyers, sellers, members of the public and journalists, and were totally empty it would take a couple of hours to walk round it all.  It’s hard to imagine what other conferences could fill it.

Apparently one of them is Fruit Logistica, a fruit and vegetable exhibition, which bafflingly, is on a similar scale.  Presumably Apple, BlackBerry and Orange are all in attendance there.

No Apple at IFA though, but plenty of response to the iPad. The Samsung GALAXY Tab was a very hot topic, which was great news for 7digital, given our music store’s position on the tablet. We watched consumers interacting with the store on display devices, which is always heartening, especially when the execution is as good as it is on that device.

As well as meeting with existing partners, it was good to meet with a whole host of new partners and talk about new opportunities with them. Having ebooks in our portfolio of services is an enormous help, as the current tablet mania has great implications for ebooks.

When can I have one? James of 7digital with a Samsung GALAXY Tab

While tablets were a huge talking point for us at 7digital, there was a mammoth amount of noise about 3d televisions. Some CE brands were so keen to push 3D they didn’t have any audio devices on display. Every room seemed to have acrobats, jugglers and the like performing on stage, broadcast live to banks of 3D TVs where huge groups of people would watch them through special glasses, rather than taking them off to see the real thing. I understand why this is, but it did look pretty absurd  to a passer by.

Whether consumers really want 3D just yet is open to question. There’s precious little content, and most have upgraded to flat panel pretty recently. The glasses seem to be one of the biggest obstacles, and you might be tempted to think the whole concept could go the way of the mini-disc if it weren’t for the fact that it has clear and immediate implications for gaming where the issue will be much less of a barrier.

Sharp's glasses-free 3D Tablet. Available sometime soon!

If the no-glasses-required 3D technology improves and takes off, it could have some pretty wild implications for tablets. Sharp already have a 3D tablet, which with the addition of motion control being demoed on some TV’s, really set the mind racing about how 3D user interfaces could work in the future.

But back to the present: the other clear trend was for connected devices, especially TV’s and the requirement for cloud based media services, which for  7digital is a very good news indeed.

The opening day of IFA in Berlin, the leading consumer electronics trade show, saw the launch of a genuine challenger to the iPad, Samsung’s  GALAXY Tab.

To the right, Ben Drury CEO of 7digital

Powered by Android  2.2, the Samsung GALAXY Tab is the first of the company’s tablet devices.  The GalaxyTab allows consumers to experience PC-like web-browsing and enjoy all forms of multimedia content on the perfectly sized 7-inch display, wherever they go. Moreover, users can continuously communicate via e-mail, voice and video call, SMS/MMS or social network with the optimized user interface.

We believe the GALAXY Tab is a real contender to Apple’s iPad and Samsung’s experience as a leading consumer electronics company puts it in a strong position to help deliver a true ‘connected life’ experience.

At 7digital we are extremely proud to be associated with the GALAXY Tab with the 7digital music store deeply embedded in the device via the Samsung Music Hub.  Users of the Galaxy Tab will have access to 7digital’s store of over 10 million MP3 tracks across many countries.  What is even more exciting is that our existing over 2 million customers will automatically have access to their accounts and music collection via the GALAXY Tab, making the transition to a mobile device even easier.

Watch the video courtesy of Android Central: Click here

Find out what some of the blogs are saying:

Read the Samsung press release – Click here