Blinkbox Music
 |
|
|
Type of site
|
Music streaming |
|---|---|
| Owner | Guvera |
| Revenue | Advertising, subscription |
| Website | www |
| Alexa rank |
 308,439 (April 2014[update]) |
| Registration | Free, required for streaming, required to create playlists |
| Launched | April 2007 (as We7) May 2013 (as Blinkbox Music) |
| Current status | Administration |
Blinkbox Music (formerly We7) was a free, advertising supported, music streaming service, with over 12 million tracks available for streaming in the UK and Ireland, with content from all four major record labels, and most independent labels and distributors.
Songs streamed on Blinkbox Music were accompanied by a short audio advert, or blipvert, which plays before each song. This was usually combined with a change in the advert on the page, with the intent of the audio advert drawing attention to the clickable advert.
We7 reached 500,000 users and 3.5 million tracks in March 2009 and 3 million users and 6.8 million tracks in January 2011.
In June 2012, We7 was acquired by UK retailer Tesco for £10.8 million and was rebranded under the Blinkbox name in May 2013.
Tesco sold the service to Guvera in January 2015. Blinkbox Music was placed in administration in June 2015.
In October 2015, the former employees of Blinkbox Music filed a £10m class action lawsuit against Guvera.
We7 originally launched as a music download service in June 2007, with 3 million tracks available to stream from launch.
In October 2008, the site shifted focus to music streaming, initially with content from Sony BMG, including a change of design that integrated a persistent music player in the page, allowing the music to continue to play while users browse the site.
Since the full launch in November 2008, the site has had various promotions and exclusives. In February 2009 it partnered with NME to provide streaming music widgets on their article pages, and in March it introduced an exclusive 'listening party' preview of Dutch singer Alain Clark's debut UK single "Father & Friend", followed by an exclusive version of his album the week after.
In February 2010 We7 embraced the freemium business model by offering an advert-free service for a monthly subscription.
At the end of September 2011, We7 changed from an on demand service to a music DJ service. This opened up a new premium service offer as well as a new logo and site layout. This stopped the free choice of songs that was previously the We7 service and opened a recommended music player instead which plays related songs and artists. Free users had a 50 limit of requests to add to the radio queue.
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Wikipedia