Taking 7digital’s Music Store for a Spin

Earlier this week, I caught an article over at Ars that took a look at the upcoming “music store” that will become a feature in Ubuntu’s upcoming “Lucid Lynx” release (10.4 LTS). Essentially, via GNOME’s popular Rhythmbox, users will be able to purchase music right through the application in a similar manner as Windows users can purchase music through iTunes. I found myself intrigued.

Whenever I catch wind of a digital music store that isn’t Amazon, iTunes or Zune, I am a little bit skeptical because of bad experiences in the past. But the article mentioned  that the digital music service behind this new feature, 7digital, offered over 4 million songs. That’s not the 10+ million of iTunes, but for a service I’ve never heard of before, that’s quite an eye-catcher.

Despite being a Linux user, I’ve relied on iTunes for my digital music needs thanks to the fact that the service is open to Canadians. Since I first started using it, I’ve purchased well over 500 tracks and have been for the most part pleased. I’ve always wanted to dip into Amazon and Zune Marketplace, but each one pins out Canadians for some reason, so I had little choice. I was surprised to see that 7digital did not. In fact, they support consumers from much of Europe and the US as well.

I decided to give the service a go, just to see if it could live up to my high expectations. At first, I was rather impressed by the selection. The company offers a wide selection featuring new artists, such as Lady GaGa, BT and Gorillaz, but also include lesser-known bands such as Gogol Bordello, Violent Delight (defunct, but wanted to check as a test) and Brooklyn Bounce (yes, I have tastes all over the place).

The site also listed an album I’ve been putting off buying since 2004, so I decided to commit to a purchase and give the service a test. One thing I didn’t mention is that 7digital offers most of its music in MP3 at 320Kbit/s, so for the most part, it should suffice for most people (I still yearn for a FLAC digital music store). To download the tracks, or album, you have the option to do it via the Web, or through a small application you can download that ties you to your account. Since I use Linux, I only tested the Web version.

Once an album is purchased, your “Locker” page will list it, along with any other music you might have purchased. You have the option to download that single album or song, or the entire album at once. Unlike some other services which don’t allow a second download (in case of a crash), or iTunes which normally allows one more go, 7digital allows up to 3 downloads per purchase. It’s not perfect, but it’s far better than the competition.

If you download a full album, it downloads as a .zip, while single songs download as an MP3, as you’d expect. The application downloader will likely handle the albums in a non-zip format, but I didn’t test it out. Resulting folders and filenames will be something to the effect of ArtistAlbum Name## Song Name.mp3.

The album I purchased (DJ Kayslay – The Streetsweeper Vol. 2: The Pain From The Game) is a compilation of various artists, so it appeared that way in my audio player, Amarok. Oddly, though, once the song hit my playlist, it was forced into a various artists format, with each song showing a “featuring <Artist>”. The ID3 tags seem to be protected, but in both foobar2000 and Windows Media Player, the songs looked fine, so Amarok was clearly reading some ID tag that the other players didn’t catch.

Fortunately, Amarok has a feature called “Organize Files” that completely took care of the issue. I’m not sure how, but it did. If you are as fussy about file names in your audio collection as I am, bear this in mind. Again, this is very unlikely to affect most people. Amarok pretty much picks up on anything in an audio file.

That small issue might make more work for me in the end, but going forward, I won’t hesitate to re-visit this service again, and I plan to anytime I want to purchase an album digitally. In a 7digital vs. iTunes grudge match, I found that both services evened out in terms of overall pricing. In some cases, 7digital had the better price, and in others, iTunes did. So even if you do use both services, you might want to shop around.

But, one thing to bear in mind is that 7digital offers two things iTunes doesn’t… higher-quality MP3’s, and more than one download of a particular track/album. It gives a great peace of mind knowing that if you happen to lose an album you purchased, you can go straight to the site, log in, and re-download… all without hassle.

It’s great to see another digital music provider that’s doing a lot of things right. I’m just surprised it took me this long to learn of it.

Established in 2004, 7digital is a leading digital media delivery company based in London and operating globally. Combining our secure and robust technology platform with the broadest agreements within the digital media industry, we provide comprehensive digital download services to a wide range of partners around the world. We have worked with record companies, artists, FMCG brands, retailers, consumer electronics companies, fashion brands, advertising agencies and many other organisations looking to harness the power of digital entertainment to engage customers.