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WE7 Music streaming service takes on Spotify in Europe

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With over 3 million unique users on a monthly basis, we7 is a huge music streaming service available to people in the UK and Ireland.

It’s also the only cloud-based music streaming service that gives listeners the chance to create their own radio stations from scratch, based on their favourite artists, genres and albums. There are over 7 million songs available online for streaming on both PC and mobile phones.

There’s existing radio stations covering a broad range of tastes and genres which listeners can subscribe to, or for the more adventurous there’s the option of creating a bespoke station tailored to personal tastes. We7’s Internet Radio Plus function intelligently analyses your artist and song searches and suggests similar music, creating a playlist to each listener’s taste.

Apps are available on iPhone, Android and PC, meaning you won’t be without your personal radio station at home or on the go. Fun fact: Legendary musician and ex-vocalist of Genesis, Peter Gabriel, is a founding investor of the we7 service!

Now that you know what we7 is, you should probably know about their plans to go head to head with Spotify in the European music streaming business.

The service has been running now since November 2008, with signups being free (they still are!) to UK and Ireland residents. Now we7 is gearing up to expand and plans are set to take on Europe with their library of over 7 million songs and unique bespoke playlist features.

Recently the company has acquired funding from Peter Gabriel himself, Eden Ventures, Qualcomm Incorporated and Pentech Ventures which will allow them to expand to European shores during 2011 and 2012.

Steve Purdham, we7 CEO said:

“There’s no doubt in my mind that we’re on the cusp of seeing a massive change in how people consume music. People love music but not everybody wants limitless choice or has the time to search millions of songs.  They want a music service that is easy to use, plays them music they like, entertains them and discovers new music for them. we7’s service and technology will be at the heart of such change on the web and mobiles”

We7 will be announcing new partnerships along with their move into the European market over the next few months.

We’ll be speaking to CEO of we7, Steve Purdham shortly so stay tuned for an update on their plans for Europe and expanding the service. If you have any questions you’d like answered by Steve then feel free to put them forward by leaving a comment, or alternatively tweet them to us @Gadget_Helpline.

UPDATE: We’ve spoken to Steve about we7’s plans, and here’s what he had to say.

Gadget Helpline: Which countries will we7 be available in initially?

Steve: “There are several countries that we are looking to launch in. It’s not 100% certain and obviously depends on us gaining the correct licensing.  But high on our target list are Spain, Italy and Belgium. In addition to those three territories such as Germany are interesting but the current payment mechanisms that are being proposed by the business on the ground currently make it not economically viable. That being said, streaming digital music is still in its infancy and business parameters can change at the drop if a hat. We’ll keep a close eye on all European countries and I can safely say that we are able to move quickly so if and when new opportunities become available we’ll take them.”

Gadget Helpline: Are there plans to go stateside? If so when would this be expected?

Steve: “At this point we’re not looking at the US. Pandora is a very successful product and their marketplace is becoming very competitive with many other players launching or about to launch. Once again as with Europe we can move quickly and if the right opportunities present themselves I would never say never. But right now there are no plans.”

Gadget Helpline: What do you feel we7 can offer over Spotify?

Steve: “we7 is more than just a service where you can stream music. Our killer selling point is the fact that we can create a radio station that is bespoke and personalised to each user. Over 46 million people listen to radio in the UK. We are able to create a bespoke radio station for each and everyone of our listeners.  Sometimes too much choice is a bad thing. Maybe you don’t know what song you want to hear.  Maybe you don’t even know what artist you want to hear, you just know you are in the mood for some dance music. Fine, just type that in to our search box and we’ll hit you with dance music.

If you tell us more about what you love we’ll start to really tailor your music to you along with the curated play lists you’ll see when you log in. It is all totally bespoke. we7 will always play a selection of songs that you know but we’ll also drop new songs or bands in there too, they’ll be in-keeping with your musical taste. Radio is an incredibly popular and mass market medium. We want to take that medium people already love and make it even more engaging and relevant to them.

Finally the way we7 works is not application based.  You access our service via an internet browser, which means it’s a lot easier to access your music, you don’t have to download software to the devices you want to listen to music on.  It also means our users can share music with anybody where as Spotify users are only able to share their music with other Spotify users”