7digital is building a musical empire out of tablets. The online music store has announced it will power the music hubs on the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy Tab and Toshiba Folio tablet PCs, with deals with O2 and others in the works.
The Tab arrives on 1 November. 7digital will povide the music store so you can browse and buy music from within the tablet’s music app, as you would from iTunes on the Apple iPad or iPhone 4. The music shop is planning to power the music offering on other forthcoming Samsung devices too.
Even the iPad isn’t safe from the 7digital onslaught, as the new cloud-based music player uses HTML and JavaScript and will work in the Apple tablet’s browser. The company has submitted an actual app to Apple, and is waiting with all fingers and toes crossed for approval and entry into the iTunes app store.
Like the Spotify app, the 7digital app will offer offline access and wireless syncing of tunes purchased from 7d. An updated Android app is imminent, while an HTML5 mobile site is available now at m.7digital.com.
Mobile network O2 will be promoting 7digital across PC, mobile and connected devices, although it’s not clear which handsets this will involve.
Services such as 7digital, Spotify and We7 are making iTunes look increasingly old-timey. 7digital already powers Spotify’s music-buying option, allowing you to click through to the store from most songs in the popular music-streaming service. The music-buying option is absent from the Spotify iOS app, as it competes directly with iTunes — a big no-no for Jobs’ mob. We wait with baited breath to see if the 7dig app gets the thumbs-up from Cupertino.