We7 claims to be the fastest growing ad supported music site in the UK
UK ad supported music site We7 has had some catching up to do recently, after Swedish upstart Spotify seemingly came from nowhere to become the darling of the legal music scene in Europe. So it’s interesting to see that in spite of Spotify’s huge growth, We7 is now the ninth most prominent music site according to Hitwise data.The company also claims to be “the fastest growing
ad-funded music website in the UK” with “more than 600k unique users per month from the UK alone.”
For comparison: Spotify claimed a million UK users at the end of April, with earlier figures estimating a quarter of a million in February. That certainly makes Spotify, and not We7 the fastest growing ad funded music website in the UK. We 7 says it has seen 777% growth since the company’s launch in November 2007 with 502% growth since January.
It’s interesting to note that according to the Hitwise data, Spotify is languishing in 17th place on their chart. However this is because Spotify is a client-based service which means that users don’t have to visit their website to listen to the music. We7 users do have to visit www.we7.com to tune in.
Either way, though, the figures suggest that ad supported services are getting momentum in the UK and both services are moving towards the mainstream; which is where they need to be if they’re going to start sucking up the ad revenue.
May 5th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
surely musically you understand that spotify is an app not a website – and hitwise is an independent website monitoring service – so this is not we7 “claiming” as your article says, it is we7 showing latest hitwise stats for music websites which show we7 is indeed the fastest growing UK music website.
we7’s use of independent data to prove its growth (hitwise for traffic; atlas for advertising; occ for data) should be applauded. if only everyone did the same.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:10 am
We7 is a web based service and of course they have more web traffic than Spotify. But everyone smart enough understands that We7 has no chance in comparison to Spotify in terms of growth. Spotify grows like crazy without even trying. Still invite system except for UK.
May 6th, 2009 at 8:43 am
Agree with the last sentence in the article. Between Spotify and We7 there are now perhaps close to 2 million people just in the UK who are using legal licensed streaming services. What they all were doing before we can only guess!
Whether either service will stay around depends on if they have the right model for advertising sales. We7 is built totally with advertising in mind. Spotify has very little advertising right now. This is why it will grow much quicker than We7 – until they increase their advertising and lose many of the current users. Both services are very positive moves and do different things in different ways. Does the media always have to play them off against each?
October 7th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
[...] top ranking reflects this. It clearly sets some store by the Hitwise rankings, as back in May, we7 claimed to be the fastest growing UK music site according to Hitwise’s [...]
October 8th, 2009 at 11:34 am
[...] a mesma companhia de análise de mercado tinha revelado dados segundo os quais a We7 tinha sido o site britânico de música a registar o maior [...]
October 8th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
[...] top ranking reflects this. It clearly sets some store by the Hitwise rankings, as back in May, we7 claimed to be the fastest growing UK music site according to Hitwise’s [...]