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UK digital music service, 7 Digital, today launched its digital music service in the US, while also making a grab at the mobile market with launch of a music download store for BlackBerry users.

7 Digital is well-known in Europe, but is raising the bar in competition in the US with its launch there. Tracks will cost 77-cents, or $7.77 for an album (standard prices, variable prices also exist).

Tracks are sold in high-quality 320kbps MP3 format, completely free of DRM. The company also offers a “digital locker” in which all your downloads are backed-up on 7 Digital’s servers in the even you need to redownload them in case of computer failure.

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Well our American cousins have been investing in the next, best iteration of OS X since this weekend. Now Amazon UK has opened for business selling the software for pre-order, (price, mysteriously, not avail. on Amazon’s site, or Apple’s – please guys, give Britain a day off from feeling ripped-off, is tough times here, after all..)

So – you can sign-up now on this Read the rest of this entry »

UK online music service, 7digital, revealed a new pan-European deal with Warner Music this morning. Under the deal the online music service will now offer Warner Music’s MP3 catalogue across all its European outlets – that’s significant because it is in fact the first time a major has agreed a pan-European MP3 deal of this kind.

The UK-based service observes that this one deal makes it Europe’s largest MP3 retailer, in the sense that it offers tracks in more European countries than iTunes or Amazon.

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Welcome to the new iPod age – or at least we’re swinging rapidly toward it, it seems.

Amazon today introduced new discount prices across its range of stocked iPods – another in a series of clear signals suggesting new models are on the way, as the webosphere gets frantic over the next-gen iPods with built-in cameras, oh yes.

Discounts range between 4-13 per cent, Read the rest of this entry »

UK digital music retailer 7digital.com this week released figures which confirm a huge increase in sales following the company’s first to market move to offer music for sale online free of DRM.

The company’s fourth quarter sales grew over 260 per cent on strength of it offering tracks in high-quality MP3 format, free of restrictive DRM.

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The world’s biggest music market, USA, has seen some positive and some worrying trends in recent months.

With iTunes ascendant and Amazon MP3 store now claiming c.8% of US digital music sales, with 15% of US internet users purchasing music from online stores in the third quarter of 2008, NPD Group reports.

This contrasts with CD purchasing figures, which continue to decline faster than digital grows. Nielsen SoundScan reports US album sales were down 21.7% in the first week of December, compared with the same period last year.

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On the heels of its soft launch of the Amazon MP3 store in the UK yesterday, the online shopping giant has invaded the iPhone, launching its own shopping app for the Apple device.

While the application falls short of offering users a route through which they can purchase and download music from the retailer’s new online service, it does offer a mobile front-end for online purchase of physical goods.

The application lets users search and browse for products offered by Amazon and thousands of retailers, access Customer Review and purchase items using 1-Click Shopping and Amazon Prime.

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Amazon’s move to introduce its DRM-free MP3 download store in the UK is beginning to generate reactions from within the UK music industry, with competing online music service, 7Digital’s CEO Ben Drury noting his company went DRM-free first in the UK.

“We’d like to congratulate Amazon UK for finally entering the MP3 market albeit a little late,” he said. “We announced on September 16th that we were the first in Europe to achieve this. It’s great that general retailers like Amazon clearly recognise the importance of digital music for consumers and the MP3 universal music format which works on all devices.
 
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Amazon opened up its iTunes competitor, the Amazon MP3 Store in the UK this morning.

Marking the launch of the store the company has launched a wave of aggressive price cuts on new albums from artists including Take That, Kings of Leon and Coldplay, making albums available for just £3.

The store, which offers music in the MP3 format free of stifling DRM, also offers flexible pricing – long a bone of contention between Apple and the music labels.

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Digital music sales continue fast growth in the US, accounting for 18 per cent of the music market there this year, and set to climb to 41 per cent of total sales across the next five years, Forrester Research claims.

The report predicts 55 per cent of US online consumers will pay to download music in 2013. Despite this strong growth, labels must get used to a smaller value music market, say the analysts, overall the US music market will shrink from its current level of $10.2 billion to $9.8 billion in the next five years.

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