British supermarket Tesco has bought 91% stake in digital music platform WE7 for a total of £10.8 million ($16.75 million). The company will purchase the remaining shares within a period of weeks. WE7 is a leading free-to-listen, personalised internet radio service where customers can listen to the music they love and discover new music that they might like, based on their previous selections.
With an extensive library of 11 million tracks, WE7 offers the latest releases, well-known classics and a comprehensive catalogue of all music genres. The service is available at www.WE7.com on PC and Mac and via apps on iPhone, iPad and Android smart phones and tablets and with the acquisition, Tesco plans to launch additional digital music services from the WE7 platforms in the coming months.
Mark George, Digital Director at Tesco, said “Customers and technology together are transforming the way we listen to music. Tesco is already one of the UK’s largest retailers of CDs; this move will help us offer a greater choice for the growing number of customers who want to access music instantly on any device, whenever and wherever they want. WE7 has a great team and a good technology platform from which we can launch a range of digital music services in the future.”
