SonyBMG Join Up With WE-7

Mark Mulligan | April 28, 2008, 09:35 AM

Hot on the heels of their deal with Nokia, SonyBMG have inked a deal with UK based ad-supported download service WE-7.

I’m sure the guys at We-7 are very relieved to be able to plaster Leona Lewis and Mark Ronson all over their site as a quick peek at the top 10 artists on the service to date suggests a rather unfortunate combination of limited catalogue and a skewed early adopter base:

#3 Uriah Heep (what the ??!!!)
#4 The Kinks
#6 The Searchers
#7 Emerson Lake and Palmer
#9 The Troggs

And (admittedly much) further down the list there are even the long-lost 80's glam metal guys W.A.S.P., which brings back memories of my misspent heavy metal youth.

But I’m being unfair, this is a relatively new service just getting off the ground, and is different from the more well known ad-supported duo in that its focus on the advertisers is so strong, it almost feels like it is an advertiser’s service first and a music service second. Which is no bad thing, as the ad-supported offerings are only going to make it if they get their ad story right.

Jupiter’s got a European report coming out soon looking at the opportunity in Europe, on a country by country basis, for ad-supported and subsidized offerings, compared to the premium download opportunity. Watch this space for more details.