7digital is continuing its bid to take on Apple's iTunes by announcing a collaboration with music-streaming service Spotify, which will allow web users to purchase the tracks they listen to on the streaming service.
Spotify is a Swedish-based internet radio station that allows users to create a playlist of songs. They can also create 'collaborative' playlists, which are assigned their own web addresses, and can then be added to by other Spotify listeners.
The tracks are broadcast in a style similar to commercial radio, in that they are peppered with adverts. However, for 99p, Spotify users can purchase a whole day of ad-free listening time, or alternatively pay a £10 monthly subscription and never hear an advert again.
With the new partnership, Spotify users will be able to click the 'Buy From 7digital.com' link while streaming tracks on the service. These links will navigate to 7Digital's site where users can purchase 320kbps MP3 files from a catalogue of six million tracks.
7Digital also revealed that it plans to allow Spotify users to purchase all of the tracks on the playlists they have created, as well as introducing 'one click' downloads.
"Spotify is a great way to listen to and discover music and, through integration with 7digital.com, our users can now take their digital music with them wherever they go. We're committed to developing the world's largest streaming music catalogue and 7digital.com's huge catalogue of high quality MP3 downloads makes them an ideal partner for us," said Daniel Ek, CEO and founder of Spotify.
Earlier this month, 7Digital also offered users of music library Songbird the ability to download tracks.
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Comments received
Adam said on Mon, 30 Mar 2009
But Spotify can't actually play mp3s can it, only stream from the service?
I quite like Spotify, but the barrier is that it doesn't replace iTunes and other music libraries as much as supplement them with free ways to explore other music. If I could somehow combine the two and have playlists of both music I owned and music streamed then that'd be great, and I'd probably use Spotify much more than I do.
Mark said on Tue, 31 Mar 2009
I agree but I'm increasingly launching Spotify to listen to music, and just using iTunes to listen to Podcasts, Audiobooks etc...
mahboob said on Thu, 09 Apr 2009
good article
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