What is the difference between "downloading" and "streaming"?
When you "stream" music you listen to it directly on the we7 website. As opposed to "downloading", where you download an actual file onto your computer that you can transfer to your mp3 player, with streaming you do not download anything.
What is the player at the top of each page?
This is what plays your music on we7! The player will appear on every page you browse on, which means you navigate around the site without your music being interrupted.
How do I go about playing music on we7?
Wherever you are, you just need to click on the blue play button to listen to some music. You will find it next to any album or songs available online and once clicked, the music will play in the player at the top of the page.
Can I skip between songs?
Yes, to skip onto a different song, hit the forward or back button (next to the play button) or click on the play button beside the song you want to listen to. To pause, simply hit the pause button in the player at the top and the music will stop playing.
How can I buy music on we7?
Easy! All you need to do is add money to your balance.
When you click on a track or an album to purchase for the first time you will be asked to top up your balance. By clicking on "Top Me Up!", you will go through the top-up process. Once you have transferred money to your balance, every time you buy a song or an album, your balance will come down accordingly.
You can then purchase and download immediately as many songs and albums as your balance will allow.
Your balance total can be seen in the top right hand corner of the page - you need to be signed in to see this.
To buy an individual song, click the "Buy" button on the right hand side of the song. To buy an entire album, click the "Buy album" button at the top of the tracklisting. You can also instantly buy a song you are listening to by clicking on the "Buy" button on the player at the top of the page.
What happened to the free, ad-funded downloads?
we7 is committed to offering a sustainable and legal service that is capable of supporting itself while paying the artists fairly. Unfortunately, at the moment the cost of ad-funded downloads is too high to cover from advertising revenues. After much deliberation, we decided that the best option for everyone would be to turn this feature off for the time being. This will allow us to continue building we7 within its means, and hopefully to bring the feature back in the future when we are able to cover the costs of it more effectively.
Where can I find my songs to download again once I have bought them?
The songs you have tried to download after payment are stored in the Purchased Songs section of your profile. If the downloading process has failed, you can download them as many times as you like from the Purchased Songs section. This can be found under the Profile tab. This will not affect your balance as you have already purchased them. Please contact our technical support team if you still cannot download them.
Why do I have to top-up my balance with a minimum of £5.00?
Every time you use you credit or debit card to purchase goods, the card company charges a fee. Therefore, in order to keep the music you can purchase on we7 as cheap as possible, we limit how often you need to top-up.
I get an error message when I try to listen to my music.
You may get this message for a number of reasons.
Firstly, you should try to reload the page (by hitting refresh on your browser) or restarting your internet browser.
It is more likely that you need to update your version of Flash (which you can do here) or that your internet connection is not fast enough to stream music from the internet (in which case try accessing the site on a faster connection).
If you still have problems listening to music on we7, email our technical support team and we will help you further.
Why doesn't the play button work?
We have had reports of some ad-blockers interfering when playing music on we7. These ad-blockers are installed in your browser and will block some adverts and interfere with the site. As there are adverts attached to the songs, this might be the reason why the play button doesn't work. Please try to disable your ad-blocker before playing music on we7.
What bit rate do you stream at?
We stream all our music at 192kbps.
Why are there adverts on the songs?
we7 is a completely legal service that works with established record labels and artists to offer music for free to fans. Naturally, we understand that record labels and artists must be paid for the music they produce. We are able to pay record labels and artists for their work by grafting on short audio adverts to the beginning of each song that are targeted at you, the user, based upon information you have given us at the registration stage.
The revenue we receive from advertisers is split between we7 and the rights holders of the music - whether they are artists or record labels.
Can I turn the adverts off / what are advert-free days?
The adverts on we7 ensure that you can listen to music for free while the artists still get paid. We do our best to make sure that they don't disrupt your listening experience too much. Nevertheless, we understand that occasionally you might really want to listen without any adverts at all. So to say a big "thank you" for supporting we7, we're going to be giving away "advert-free days" - 24 hours with no adverts from the moment you activate it.
The more you use the site, the more days you'll get. You can check how close you are to earning an advert-free day by clicking on the meter in the top right hand corner of the site, or by going to your profile. When the meter is full you can start your advert-free day from your profile page.
Why is some music not available in my country?
Every song that we7 has in its catalogue can be played because of a licence agreement between we7 and the person who owns the rights to specific songs. Part of that agreement defines in which countries we can offer the music for download, sale or display. Our current focus is the UK, which is why many songs are only available in this country. This will change over time and new songs become available daily, so keep checking the site out.
What is the file format of the downloads?
Everything you download from we7 will be in mp3 format. Most of the mp3s that you purchase will have a bit rate of either 256kbps or 320kbps; some less popular areas of the catalogue are only available in 192 kbps for the time being but we are gradually moving everything over to 320 kbps and 256 kbps.
No Digital Rights Management (DRM) then?
No. We believe DRM unfairly restricts music fans and stops them from listening to music the way they want to. We don't want to restrict the way our users can play music downloaded from we7. You can play music downloaded from our site on any mp3 player, including the iPod.
