New low-priced online music store hits U.S. market

Jake Widman
Wednesday, 07 October 2009 01:56

Business IT - Technology

U.K. digital media company 7digital has opened a U.S. music store with pricing that undercuts iTunes, Amazon, and Rhapsody. Individual tracks go for US$0.77 and albums for $7.77.

7digital describes itself as a "digital media delivery company" that sets up download stores for digital content. The company claims to have partnered with clients ranging from record companies to newspapers to build hundreds of stores offering music and video, games, documents, "and pretty much anything else you can think of that can be delivered digitally."

The company also runs music stores in multiple countries under its own name, offering tracks in 256K or 320K MP3 and other formats, and it has just launched the U.S. store.

The store offers tracks at $0.77 and albums at $7.77, undercutting iTunes, Amazon, and Rhapsody, where prices are generally $0.99 to $1.29 per song and $9.99 to $11.99 per album.

One source claims that 7digital offers more than 8 million tracks, while another says 3.5 million. In any case, a quick search among the rock, folk, and hip-hop acts for both well-known and somewhat obscure artists didn't turn up any obvious holes in the library. (Still no Beatles, though.)

The low selling price is attractive, but the company will have to make the shopping experience as straightforward as it is on Amazon and iTunes, and so far it is not.

For example, the service offers a "locker" for backing up purchased tracks, but I couldn't find any explanation of how that worked. And on my MacBook, I couldn't get the song previews to play in either Safari or Firefox, even with my popup blockers turned off.