Navigating the choppy waters of ad-supported music, We7 hasn’t been afraid to change course. The UK startup began life as an innovative free music download service before transitioning to an on-demand browser-based offering. While most recently the company, which is backed by Peter Gabriel, Eden Venture and Spark Ventures, made a premium paid-for play with a desktop and mobile version sans-advertising.
Today, We7 is shifting focus once again in the belief that the route to mass market requires a lean-back experience more akin to Internet radio services like Pandora in the U.S. rather than a pure on-demand play such as European competitor Spotify. It’s also a model that sits more comfortably with We7′s ad-supported aspirations since music licensing fees for Internet radio are about a third of that charged for non subscription on-demand services. → Read More
One of the key advantages of on-demand music streaming services compared with traditional radio is that as well as listening to the music you choose you can do away with the DJ’s endless chatter and other interruptions. But there is a potential downside: being isolated from current events, such as breaking news.
We7, the UK music streaming service and rival to the likes of Spotify in Europe, thinks it has a solution in the form of a partnership with The Guardian Media Group-owned GMG Radio, the company behind stations such as Smooth, Real and Rock Radio. Under the agreement, GMG Radio will provide We7 listeners with breaking news via the Real Radio brand, with the two companies essentially creating a kind of hybrid offering, which potentially mixes the best of on-demand and live radio. → Read More
It’s probably tricky to time these things to perfection, since Apple pulls the strings.
The UK Spotify competitor, We7, has had its iPhone app approved and is now available to download from the iTunes App Store. The problem is that the associated premium music subscription service, needed to run the app, doesn’t seemed to have launched yet.
Or at least that’s how it looks.
Judging by the site’s subscription page and reviews published in the App Store, whilst you can download the app, since you can’t yet subscribe to the mobile version of We7′s music subscription service, it’s currently useless. → Read More
Ad supported music download service We7 has taken $6 million Series A is a round led by musician Peter Gabriel and Spark Ventures, with Eden Ventures also participating. Oxford, UK based We7 offers free music and video for download that is ad supported. The company notes that their model is “artist friendly at all times,” by making sure that rights owners get paid and artists maintain control over their Intellectual Property The services currently have just shy of 100,000 users who have downloaded over 1 million tracks. CrunchBase Information we7 Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
