Bob: a new arrival on 7Digital.com. Photograph: Anwar Hussein/Getty
This morning a troop of Guardianistas went down to London's Trendy Soho to catch up with download company 7Digital and find out about their new offering. In short, they're relaunching their website to make it snazzier, including more DRM-free downloads (and more in MP3 format), more video and a new "locker" feature that saves all your media purchases and stores them in the cloud. Jemima Kiss has the story:
Ben Drury, the 7digital managing director, said the aim is to simplify the experience by introducing the more universal mp3 file format when possible, and by offering the service online so that users can buy, listen or store music without having to download a new piece of software.
"The locker is the key thing. It's like the way Hotmail revolutionised email by offering web-based email. 7digital gives access to your media anywhere so you can listen anywhere," Mr Drury added.
They also added preferential partnership with Last.fm, meaning you'll be able to click through from a Last track to buy from 7Digital, but it is indeed the locker feature - which is entirely web-based, meaning you can store your library of 7Digital purchases and then listen to or watch them wherever you can get internet access - that's really intriguing.
Whereas, say, an Apple TV needs you to buy telly or video content from iTunes, then download it on to your Mac, then stream it back to your Apple TV so that you can watch it on the telly (phew), you should in theory be able browse the 7Digital site on a Wii (for example) and simply stream your video direct from the locker.
Even so, it's tough to see them significantly damaging iTunes market share in the UK - but we do love our plucky British startups.
Right now the new site doesn't appear to be live, but you can get a sneak peak by visiting new.7digital.com.
