We7

» see we7.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the obit ~

we7 was uk-only at the licensing layer and never crossed to turkey. the music streaming services i knew at the time were imeem and last.fm and grooveshark and youtube. spotify hit the uk in october 2008 and the rest of europe gradually, with turkey only getting a localised version much later. the uk-coded free-streaming service with a peter gabriel co-founder credit sat outside of that orbit entirely.

the launch was april 2007 in london. peter gabriel of genesis put his name and capital into it, alongside steve purdham who had previously co-founded the enterprise web-filtering company surfcontrol. the original product was a music download store: free mp3 tracks bundled with a short audio advertisement that played before each song. the labels signed because the ads turned the free-music problem into a revenue line. the service shifted to streaming in october 2008, which is exactly when spotify launched in europe and the model became the dominant shape of free music online.

the user numbers grew fast. by march 2009 we7 had half a million users and 3.5 million licensed tracks. by january 2011 it carried three million users and 6.8 million tracks, with full label deals across the uk and ireland. in june 2012 tesco, the uk supermarket chain, bought the company for £10.8 million as part of a digital-media expansion alongside the blinkbox video service. in may 2013 tesco retired the we7 name and rebranded the streaming product to blinkbox music. the original we7 brand ended there.

~ the rap sheet ~

~ the rise ~

the rise made sense for the uk window between 2007 and 2010. the music industry was still hostile to free streaming everywhere else, but the gabriel name opened doors at the major labels, and the ad-supported model gave the labels a per-play revenue number they could write into contracts. the product worked: large catalogue, no signup friction for free listening, decent player. the uk and ireland licensing scope kept it from competing against spotify globally, which was probably the only reason it survived as long as it did once spotify arrived.

~ how it actually ended ~

tesco bought we7 in june 2012 for £10.8 million, folded it into the blinkbox digital media unit, and rebranded it to blinkbox music in may 2013. the we7 brand stopped existing at that point. the blinkbox music service then ran for about eighteen more months under tesco ownership before tesco's whole digital strategy unwound. in january 2015 blinkbox music was sold to the australian streaming startup guvera. by june 2015 guvera placed the operation in administration. former employees filed a £10 million class action against guvera in october 2015. the music service never came back.

~ what came after ~

the inheritance is mostly a cautionary tale that supermarket chains do not turn into streaming companies. tesco's blinkbox video unit also collapsed inside the same window. the uk ad-supported free-music tier got absorbed into spotify's free tier on one side and youtube on the other, with no remaining local british service of any size. peter gabriel went back to his own label and platform work. steve purdham moved on to other startups. the we7 brand is one of the european music-streaming names that you would only remember if you spent the late 2000s on a uk broadband connection.

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