Not such a long tail for we7 users

we7 boss Steve Purdham has been talking to Hypebot about listening patterns on its streaming music service. “We have 6.5 million songs in the music catalogue. Last week and consistent with all previous weeks, 52% of music listened to on we7 came from 100 artists, and only 22% of tracks in our catalogue get touched each month. Which is still 1.43 million tracks a month, but you get his point. “If a music track, artist, or album is not in the public consciousness, it does exist, so people don't search for it – hence no long tail.” Which, of course, ties into we7's new internet radio service, which will serve up track recommendations to what Purdham describes as “passive participants”.