7digital Blog

Music Hacking in Sydney

Lee Porte — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:15:41 +0000

A few weeks ago we attended Music Hack Day Sydney. We’ve been to music hack days in the past, but this one felt a bit special given that it was Australia’s first ever Music Hack Day. And, that we had (soft) launched our Australian store.

For the uninitiated, Music Hack Day is a series of events that bring together developers and hardware tinkerers to build and present, music-related “hacks” over a single weekend. There were a wide range of attendees from mobile developers and visual designers to analog synth tweakers and audio engineers, many who went on hacking through the night without any sleep.

It is about having the space, opportunity and talent combined to create something with music and tech, without any commercial agendas or constraints. In the short space of 24 hours participants have to team up, come up with an idea, and build a working prototype to show to the group.

The Filter Squad, makers of the Discovr apps, did a fantastic job of hosting the event at Red Bull’s Sydney headquarters. With over 50 eager hackers and sponsors, stocked with what seemed like an endless supply of Red Bull, beer and pizza, it was clear from the start that this was going to be good.

We were really impressed by the quality of hacks produced over the weekend. Here are a few highlights:

InstaSound

Let’s vinyl and CD shoppers scan album cover art for a quick way to listen to the album before buying it in-store.

Wish You Were Here

A simple web app that let’s you listen to album versions of the songs played in a gig that you’re missing in real-time, as they are played live. It uses the 7digital API for streaming and we thought it was a neat idea.

Soundtrack Of You

What your parents were likely listening to when you were conceived.

Ivy

Like Instapaper for Music. Ivy is web app that let’s you bookmark music from YouTube and blog posts to add to a playlist. Your friends are also able to listen and contribute to the same playlist.

TokStar

TokStar is a virtual karaoke room built using the TokBox and 7digital APIs. Choose your song, enter your name, enable your camera and microphone, wait your turn, and you’re up and running on its virtual stage, singing your heart out for the voting pleasure of other visitors to the site.

Rethink Music Leads the Forward-Thinking Digital Pack

Lee Porte — Wed, 02 May 2012 09:59:27 +0000

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!

Devs in the ‘ditch

Lee Porte — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 09:14:39 +0000

On Thursday night we threw open our doors to the Shoreditch developer community and welcomed all and sundry in to the inaugural Devs in the ‘ditch event. Devs in the ‘ditch gives the chance for many developers working in both small and large companies the chance to network, learn and share experiences of life cutting code.

To kick things off networking and beers were the order of the day, as well as drying out from the biblically proportioned downpour. Once everyone had taken their seats we were treated to a lightning talk given by Andrés about how 7digital manage the structure of the database schema around ever changing development needs, and more importantly how this is version controlled to ensure traceability and that changes can be verified across environments.

One of the key takeaways from Andrés was that traceability in database changes is essential, and the process to log this changes should be the same and as simple as how changes are done for code. The failure to implement such a process makes people reluctant of fixing the database layer in favour of placing workarounds on top, which in itself is a code smell.

To follow up we had Paul Shannon delivering his Code Smells talk. Paul has toured this talk across the UK, and has honed both the talk and his nose for code smells to an exceptional degree. Paul began with explaining what a code smell was, it is an analogy taken from the smell given off from bad food.

Why should we worry about code smells was an initial reaction from many. Paul quickly explained that the core behind finding code smells was to make life much simpler for a development team. Clean code is easier to understand, work with and from a business perspective is cheaper to maintain and extend.

What are the smells? They include some obvious ones like having dead code included, if it’s not doing anything, kill it off. There are also some not always obvious smells included, such as an uncommunicative name, if it has a name that tells you what it does then there is no need for comments. Comments was a particularly interesting smell raised by Paul, generating plenty of comments about comments. Well actually it was more like heckles!

The evening had a great buzz and both speakers were well received by the audience. Many were taking detailed notes and were anticipating the release of Paul’s Prezi. On the wrapping up of the event, many of the discussions continued in the pub around the corner. With the success of this event we can firmly say that the devs are most certainly in the ‘ditch, and they are there in force.

7digital Brings MP3 Music to Windows Phone

Lee Porte — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 08:54:18 +0000

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.

7digital does Canadian Music Week

alexcorradi — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 11:21:32 +0000

A far cry from the hazardous, boot camp-like conditions of SXSW, Canadian Music Week is an intimate gathering of stakeholders in the Canadian music industry, held at the luxurious Fairmont Hotel in Toronto. The event includes an extremely exciting roster of artist showcases throughout the week, an ever-engaging list of panels, meet-ups and mentor sessions for getting to know who is who in the Canadian music business, and even a black tie gala dinner that proved music industry people can get dressed up in fancy clothing (we sadly did not attend).

Visiting on behalf of 7digital this year was President of North America, Vickie Nauman and Marketing Manager for North America, Anna Siegel. The two met with numerous Canadian labels, publishers, marketing professionals, and artists throughout their short three days in attendance.

Vickie was on a panel called Distribution & Profit: Does Music’s “Victimless Crime” Finally Pay?, moderated by Casey Rae-Hunter, Deputy Director of the Future of Music Coalition. Possibly drawn by the perplexing title, the room hosted an engaged audience and an interesting discussion largely focused around different music business models, and the debate heated up around sustainability of legal “freemium” streaming services. The splitting of digital music revenues amongst so many stakeholders was raised as a continuing problem, and audience member and CMRRA President, David Basskin, gave 7digital a nice shout out but echoed the frustration of shifting from analogue dollars to digital dimes, which is exemplified most strongly in on-demand streaming services.

Brian Felsen, President of CD Baby, took a positive tone, explaining that his roster of independent artists are finding new audiences and revenue streams through Spotify and social media such as Facebook. Felippe Llerena, Executive Director of iMusica S/A in Brazil, was quick to remind others not only of the shifting paradigms presented by emerging markets but also the new role of music as a medium competing with other forms of entertainment, such as games in the digital era.

Vickie explained the headache-inducing complexity that 7digital incurs when making payouts to content owners around the world for licensing and selling MP3s, and reaffirmed the need for ease of use in music services as an essential expectation for music buyers. Jeff Roberto from Shazam noted that we are still at early stages, and all acknowledged that if global licences were possible, sustainability would certainly become more likely. As it stands, the complexity presented by global business and music rights holders will continue to keep the industry in the hot seat when looking for ease of profitability.

Some of the artists getting buzz at CMW were; The Cold Specks, Ariane Moffat, Slash (keynote speaker), Michael Kiwanuka and pretty much everyone performing at the Arts & Crafts showcase. Overall an exciting and worthwhile event for 7digital to be at and we look forward to seeing the folks at CMW next year.

7digital goes to Austin – SXSW 2012

alexcorradi — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 13:31:11 +0000

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!

7digital Expands and Accelerates On Mobile Devices

alexcorradi — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 14:59:09 +0000

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?”

7digital for iPhone (Version 1.1)

alexcorradi — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 17:59:20 +0000

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.com upgrades to HTML5

alexcorradi — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:01:15 +0000

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.

Device Expansion Drives Significant Growth for 7digital in 2011

alexcorradi — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:33:18 +0000

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*

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

Top 20 Tracks 2011

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