We7 has changed!

We would like to welcome you to the new look We7 website. Our new website allows for easier access to the music you like and adds great new features and choices.

For the first time, the new look We7 now offers free, on demand streaming of tracks. This means you can choose whatever tracks you want to listen to in full, and make up playlists to listen to online or download to listen to wherever you like.

Each playlist can have up to 60 songs, and you can create multiple playlists to create a selection of tracks that fits every mood - whether you are working, playing or just chilling out! And don't forget to share your playlists with your friends!

Listening to songs from your playlist is brought to you free by playing a short audio advert before each track which is targeted to your profile - this is what generates money for the label and artist.

After each song has played, you can choose whether you want to pay to download the song without any ads - or download it for free with ads before each track.

All downloads are 192 kbps MP3s which you can play anywhere anytime on any player. If you've downloaded songs for free with ads attached, the ads don't stay there forever. You can remove them after 28 days by re-downloading the track - for free - after 28 days!

So you can listen now (stream) or listen later (download). You can choose to pay to download without ads; or download for free with ads. The choice is yours - We7 brings you Music as You Like It!!!

At the beginning not all choices and options will be available for every track... but we are determined to deliver this over time. Every day we are adding thousands of new tracks to the service. So be a part of the We7 music revolution today!

Comments

[Father Brian]

We seem to have lost the facility to select an entire album for download. Can we have this restored please?

[iggypopbarker]

you can still download an entire album by selecting all the tracks and adding them to your playlist then downloading it

new site looks great. am looking forward to listening to some bob dylan on we7!!!! : )

[A_Bavarian]

Nice new layout.

But you shouldn't take off the check-boxes allowing the completely download of an album. Within a time of 30 seconds sometimes it's hard to check a song because singing starts often far away from the 30-second-limit. The check-boxes will allow the download of the album in a ZIP-file and check out all the songs in whole lenght.

[Peter_B]

The difficulty I have with downloading single tracks is that I often get drop-outs. With a zip file, if the download doesn't complete I get a message, and although it's irritating I know I have to reload. In bad times I will download two tracks at a time, if there's not much traffic I can do the whole album.
With a single track, a drop-out leaves you with a valid MP3, just cut short. Once or twice I haven't even got the full add, let alone half a song.

[Diego]

Testing the new style... is good for me at the moment

[Diego]

i can't download an entire album, is too dificult, is awesome, but more difficult than before.

[jeremy keens]

The new layout is clean - the album download method is a bit frustrating but workable. What I am looking for is the 'my music' area which had the tracks which were now eligible for an add-free download. It told you which tracks were eligible when. How does that work now?

[jeremy keens]

OK - found it - ignore previous post

[Sal]

Yeah... the (missing) album-download function is VERY frustrating. Actually, I can't imagine downloading an album like "Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina : Miss Ex Cipriano De Rore" with 40 tracks by clicking 40 times "download this track" - and you need the complete album to aprreciate the music on it. If too many albums are downloaded, restrict downloads.
If it stays like this, I won't use we7 anymore... which would be a pity because I've ordered quite a lot of CDs afer discovering them here for free.

[Zwert]

Adding each item to the playlist individually is time consuming, and error prone. Removing the option to 'select all' is a retrograde step.

[Diego]

I have an idea: Can you add to the album sites a button that says (and do :P) something like "Ad as a new playlist"

Is too similar to the function of "select all", but maybe this will be an easiest way at the time to modify the script of the web page.

[Zwert]

I have just spent an infuriating 30 minutes trying to select the 27 files for the Schein album, and have unfailingly 'got it wrong each time'. That means that We7 have it wrong, if only because they dispensed with the individual tick boxes for each file, never mind the collective tick box.

I'll consider whether or not to junk my account out of ineffable disappointment. Meanwhile perhaps We7 staff would like to take a basic course in the psychology of perception and error rates.

People, instead of being fixated by newness (new is not always better) and instead of being fixated with the latest gimmicks, kindly sit down and think things through, or at least take advice from an occupational psychologist.

[Gareth Reakes, CTO We7]

Thanks for everyone's feedback. We really appreciate it and would love you to continue to help!

Let me try and explain why the "download whole album" function has gone. When someone downloads music from us we pay the rights holders (artists and labels). We try and cover this cost with the advertising we sell. Whether someone listens to a download 0 or 100 times we pay the rights holders the same. That's not true with what we can charge for the advertising. We charge for the average number of listens to the advert. We get this figure from research we do with our users. Many users download the whole album and then only listen to a few tracks off of it. This just does not work as we still have to pay for all the tracks but get no money from the advertising. By changing over to clicking on each one we hope that people will only download ones they really want and will listen to. With the online streaming this is all much easier as we know when you have listened to the track and the advert. The amount of money we pay to the rights holder is less and so we can cover the costs with the advert more easily.

We are coming up with all sorts of ways to make the We7 model work as well with downloads as with streams in the coming months. For example, we are going to introduce a download manager that people can install so we can see very easily how many times you have played a track. This will help us persuade advertisers they are getting what they want so we can pay the rights holders for the music you love. Please bear with us while we get this right for everyone.

[brian]

a lot of the classical albans seem to have been removed,what has happened to them.

[Gareth Reakes, CTO We7]

Hi Brian,

No albums should have disappeared. Can you contact info@we7.com with an example and we will look right into it.

[Bob M]

Thanks for the explanations and information Zwert.

Good luck with the site, a bold venture which deserves to succeed.

[Bob M]

Sorry, I meant thanks to Gareth!

[kalyons]

It's easier to find music and to listen to samples of each track in an album, but I haven't figured out how to download an entire CD using the "free with ads" option. I really miss that. I don't have a problem with the ads or intros -- here in the states they sound pretty cool!

However, if you have the option, it would be nice if you can try to match the tone of the ad/intro to the genre -- the hi-voltage intros are pretty jarring in between the tracks to a new age album like "Ancient Voices."

Again, if you could make it easier or more obvious how to download a "free" album, I'd appreciate it.

[kalyons]

Ooops. In the words of the immortal Emily Litella, "Never mind."

I just read Zwert's explanation for the missing album download function.

That's a shame. I'm old enough to still be an "album" person.

Oh, well. I'll try to make do with the Playlist function.

[londonsoulpatrol]

you can still download an album
its a bit longer than before but not much
here's how i did it..

1 sign in
2 go to the album you want
3 look to the playlist box on the right
4 click the pink button "create new"
5 think of a name for the playist and create
6 for each track, click on the + sign - each song is transferred to the playlist
7 look on trhe playlist box again and click 'manage playlists'
8 you will see a playlist with all album tracks in it
9 to download, look above playlist and click on pink word 'download'
10 you are sent a zip file - note that when you extract from the zip, you can change the zip file name to anything you want such as artist and album name
12 duddaaaah!!!! you have the album

so its a few more clicks than before, but you can get exactly the same result as before. it's still worth it for me

And...when you have all the songs in the playlist, you can actually listen to the whole album (playlist) without downloading if you want or play to try first before downloading.

cheers We7...look forward to seeing lots of new music up on here soon

[Elizabeth Henshaw, Zephyr]

I'm an artist (Zephyr) who was earning £20 (400-500 downloads) per week for the last few months from We7. Since the 'new look' site was launched I am earning around £1 per week.

I'm a little disappointed as it had been very refreshing to be involved in a project which was so supportive of independent music.

[kalyons]

Well, if nothing else, thank you for calling my attention to your work, Zephyr! At least part of this weeks' £ will be from me listening to, and then downloading, the songs on your CD!

And thank you, londonsoulpatrol, for posting those directions!

[Gareth Reakes (CTO - We7)]

Hi Zephyr.

I am sorry you have experienced a smaller number of downloads. There has been a slight decrease in overall downloads because people are only downloading the tracks they want from an album now rather than the whole album. That is no where near enough to explain your drop off though.

I have looked into this and I believe I have the answer. Before the new release the Ambient / New Age genre was at the top of browse on the front page. This meant if people were looking around it was much more likely that they would come into your genre. Now the genre list is not alphabetically ordered but ordered by how popular the genres are with users. This means people have to click on "Show all genres" before they can browse to your content.

We do believe that it is better for users to show the most popular genres more prominently as it allows them to find more of the music they want faster.

[Elizabeth Henshaw, Zephyr]

Thank you Gareth for your response.

I came to that conclusion as well re the genres shown on the home page... we (strangely) have one album in Easy Listening and one in Ambient/New Age.

We were definitely getting more whole album downloads than single downloads before. We7 is a very interesting and wonderful work in progress and I'm sure you will arrive at a solution that works for everybody at some point.

[Chrissy]

I like the new look and I find it much easier to use. Excellent site and I look forward to listen and download more free music.