7digital Launches In North America

Apple's iTunes and Amazon now have a new competitor in 7digital, a low-price MP3 website that launched in North America on Tuesday.

The website, which was previously servicing the United Kingdom and Europe, offers "daily deals" of entire albums in MP3 format for the equivalent of four British pounds (about $7 Canadian) on the British site, and the American branch of the site will sell tracks for 77 cents U.S. That's about 20 per cent cheaper than iTunes. The Canadian 7digital website is offering "albums of the week" that will sell for $9.99.

The website also offers a BlackBerry application, which its CEO Ben Drury says he's quite pleased about. Basically, that means customers will be able to purchase albums and tracks on their BlackBerrys.

"We could have launched in the U.S. earlier," Drury told Billboard.biz. "But we wanted to wait for BlackBerry — launching with them on board gives us an angle, because you'll never see iTunes on a BlackBerry."

The BlackBerry application is only compatible with BlackBerry smartphones in the U.S., U.K., Germany and Spain, but should be available in Canada soon. 7digital's catalogue features about eight million tracks, according to Billboard.biz.