7Digital MP3

What we liked: The site benefits from an unfussy interface and sensible navigation so you can browse by genre, search by title and artist or use charts and promotions to find tunes of interest. The vast catalogue includes tracks from both major and independent labels which can be previewed via the super-fast mini-player. There’s also a useful Amazon-style ‘recent history’ so you can jump back to stuff you’ve checked out previously.

Individual songs are mostly priced at an iTunes-competitive 79p (though newer chart items occasionally cost more) with many albums available for a fiver or as little as 30p per track. A generous free-downloads section combines giveaways from new artists with extracts from BBC audiobooks.

There’s considerable editorial input from the 7digital team, including articles, artist interviews and staff reviews, but while you can share recommendations with friends via email, there’s no obvious way to add your own reviews. The 7digital widget works well and having found an artist you like it’s easy to add a jukebox of their songs to your blog or website by embedding HTML code.

How it can be improved:
Although 7digital’s promotions are good, the standard price of tracks could be reduced. We’d also like the ability to add reviews and create playlists.

Our verdict:
7digital has hit on a pretty potent combination – millions of MP3s with which you can do as you please, spanning a wide range of musical genres going back to the Fifties.

Reviewed: Issue 204 (2 January 2009)