Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Now we are 7Digital

The latest in a long line of attempts to unseat iTunes, meet the relaunched 7 Digital, which is hoping to beat Apple by offering DRM-free MP3s.

They're still charging 79p a download:

"MP3 is really what the consumer wants," said Ben Drury, managing director of 7digital.

"We want our songs to be playable on as many devices as possible".

Not really, Ben. What people want is a fairly priced, decent quality file that they can do what they choose with, which isn't quite the same thing.

At the moment, 7D is offering some indie stuff and EMI's catalogue, which also reminds us that what the consumer also wants is a store that can offer stuff rather than having to go to umpteen different stores. It would be nice for there to be a credible alternative to iTunes; this, sadly, isn't it.


1 comment:

Duncan said...

You're implying this is 7digital's fault. It's not. It's the refusal of the other 3 majors to sell music in the way you describe. If anything, 7digital should be congratulated for upping the pressure further.

Unfortunately, it's likely that the other majors are now just going to wait and see what happens to EMI, and then either bandwagon-jump or abandon the whole thing entirely - depending on whether EMI sinks or swims.

Post a Comment

As a general rule, posts will only be deleted if they reek of spam.