We7 CEO talks about Apple, future of music

Steve Purdham, founder of We7, talked about his company and where the music industry is going in an interview. According to Distorted-Loop, We7 claims it is attempting to innovate music distribution by bridging the gap between illegal music downloads and pay services such as iTunes. Users of the service can listen to any track for free, but the track will contain "dynamically grafted" short ads. The track can be listened to or shared with the ads or purchased to remove them.

"The idea is to use ads to pay for the fact that music is being consumed, discovered and shared," Purdham said about the concept of We7. "Fans get free music, advertisers get audiences and the best thing - rights owners get paid." Steve went on to give credit to Apple for being an innovator, saying "without them the 4 billion tracks that have been bought would have still been downloaded in some matter, so they show what can be done."

Purdham envisions a future where everything will be available online, but the music industry has generally been trying to stop free music downloading instead of trying to restructure and finding new ways to profit from the changes. He concluded that "the future is simple, you want music, you select the song and it plays. The hard bit is deciding whether you are going to pay for that or if somebody else - an advertiser perhaps - pays on your behalf."

Filed under: industry, audio