7digital has announced a partnership with AOL to integrate its music download store with AOL’s popular Windows-based music player Winamp, following similar deals with Spotify and Songbird.
Built using 7digital’s publicly available API, European users of Winamp can purchase tracks from 7digital’s six million strong MP3 catalogue through the application’s ‘Now Playing’ menu, as well as access additional artist, track and album information.
The partnership follows a similar arrangement with open source music player Songbird (a top ten digital lifestyle product of 08) and the new favorite kid on the block, music streaming service Spotify (last100 review), although in Songbird’s case, the 7digtal store is more prominent, featuring its own dedicated iTunes Store-esque menu item (see screen shot below).
All three services get a kick back from 7digital for integrating paid-for downloads, which are offered as 320kbps MP3 compaitble with almost any music player, including iPods.
See also: Winamp goes where iTunes doesn’t dare
The availability of 7digital’s store through each application varies somewhat. The Songbird partnership currently covers the US, UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Spain, Austria, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal and Switzerland, with 7digital on Spotify available in UK, France, Spain and Germany, while the Winamp deal is Europe only, including the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Austria, Portugal and Ireland.
