On-demand music streaming app Spotify has now formally added one of the three music retail affiliates it told us about earlier this month. Listeners can right-click track names and pick "Buy From 7Digital.com", letting them purchase corresponding 320Kbps MP3s and some FLAC files from the six million track-strong service. Later, users will also get to buy whole playlists they create inside Spotify.
With Spotify gaining a loyal audience, it's a good deal for chief executive Ben Drury's Shoreditch, London-based 7Digital which, by virtue of its API, also this month inked a similar deal to be a retail affiliate inside Mozilla-based media player Songbird and which also powers some downloads for sites including Last.fm. For Spotify, it's the start of an a la carte downloads model that could supplant its core ad-supported, per-per-day and monthly subscription models. The commercial split is unclear. As is one other thing: since Spotify's model is all about streaming from the cloud, who will really buy individual tracks through it?
Spotify already had retail affiliate relationships with 7Digital, iTunes Store and Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) MP3 on a very small selection of its catalogue - for now, it will go with 7Digital alone but does want to expand in future. Earlier this month, chief executive Daniel Ek told paidContent:UK there would soon be "a more integrated offering" for the 7Digital and Amazon stores, but for iTunes the service would probably continue to link directly to the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) store. Spotify and 7Digital, however, want to "ultimately allow users to listen and buy MP3s securely with one or two clicks", Drury said in the release.
The 7Digital arrangement will be international but will start with UK and Germany, France, Italy and Spain (so far, Spotify is only available in those countries, Finland, Norway and Sweden).
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