we7

Posted on 2 Sep 2010 at 15:57

Co-founded by Peter Gabriel and funded primarily by advertising, we7 offers a free streaming service similar to Spotify.

It runs wholly in a browser window and offers tracks for download through an online store. Like Spotify, there’s also a premium, ad-free version costing £4.99 a month, along with a "premium+" service that adds streaming and offline synchronisation features for the iPhone, with an Android app to come.

we7 boasts a great Search bar that suggests albums, songs and artists, complete with cover thumbnails, in a dropdown as you type

Cleverly, as you use the free version an onscreen meter steadily builds up that, when full, nets you an ad-free day. Adverts aren’t too obtrusive, but you’ll see a lot of them in your browser and get the occasional video ad to boot.

Streaming audio in 192Kbits/sec MP3 is noticeably better than the basic Spotify package, and it’s a friendly, speedy store with strong editorial sections and a great, LastFM-style radio station where you can create a playlist just by typing in the name of a favourite artist.

There’s integrated support for Twitter and a Facebook widget, although this doesn’t offer the same depth of features as Spotify’s Facebook service.

we7 also boasts a great Search bar that suggests albums, songs and artists, complete with cover thumbnails, in a dropdown as you type. We also like the tabbed view on the artist’s page, with albums, tracks, artist notes, radio station playlists, and even merchandise and concert tickets.

With approximately four million tracks available, we7 can’t match iTunes, or even Spotify, for the breadth of its catalogue, but it has a good selection of rock, pop, folk and world music. There are some odd exceptions – there are no Oasis albums, for example, and some tracks are preview only, rather than streaming. We also found that some albums didn’t turn up on a search, but they do turn up when you search for the artist and go to their albums.

Downloading is swift and trouble-free. Everything happens from within the browser, with no need to mess around with download applications. we7 also includes a music locker feature.

There’s a lot to like about we7, and albums are competitively priced, although buying individual tracks at between 76p and £1.26 can become expensive.

With slightly lower prices, a more extensive library and a larger user base it could be a contender.