According to figures from IE Market Research, there are currently 832 million paid users of digital music worldwide, with that number expected to rise to 1.6 billion by 2014. Today, announcements from streamed entertainment provider Aspiro and the music download service 7digital point—respectively announcing a new white-label distribution deal and…

7digital, one of the leading digital music downloads retailers, will see “minimal impact” from losing the contract to sell tracks through Spotify, its CEO Ben Drury tells paidContent:UK…

Spotify is set to more closely compete with Apple’s iTunes and iTunes Store, by upgrading its pay-to-download music features and extending its smartphone and iPod capabilities to more users.

Our look at some of the big stories today in mobile. Today, RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) preloads 7digital on the PlayBook; Nokia’s still happy with Symbian; Foursquare gets an update; and a new iPad “social magazine” launches to compete with Flipboard: Zite.

Not to pile the pressure on CEO Ben Drury - but HMV’s worsening fortunes appear to suggest the increasing strategic importance of 7digital, his digital music retailer and distributor which HMV bought half of from investors in 2009.

—BlinkBox: An excellent deal for the free and paid VOD movie and TV aggregator - it’s getting added as an app to Samsung’s Internet@TV connected-TV service. Counterparts include LoveFilm, MuZu and BBC iPlayer.

Digital radio maker Pure has launched a service allowing people to buy digital music tracks via their radios. Available on five existing radio sets with more to follow, FlowSongs works by using an embedded version of Shazam, activated by a button press, to identify tracks being played through the the…

On-demand music streaming app Spotify has now formally added one of the three music retail affiliates it told us about earlier this month. Listeners can right-click track names and pick “Buy From 7Digital.com”, letting them purchase corresponding 320Kbps MP3s and some FLAC files from the six million track-strong service. Later,…

Over Christmas and New Year, paidContent:UK is asking digital media execs to pledge a resolution for the year ahead and look back at the last 12 months. Last time was BBC News technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones; next up is online music distributor and retailer 7Digital‘s chief exec Ben Drury… —What’s…

7Digital, the UK’s second largest online music store behind iTunes, tabled a press event this morning to trumpet a basket of announcements… —All MP3s: It’s now selling repertoire from all four majors in 320Kbps, DRM-free MP3 format. That follows the addition of Sony (NYSE: SNE) BMG to its lineup, which…

As if it weren’t clear from their recent memorandum of understanding with the BPI and government, the UK’s biggest ISPs are actively looking to create commercial music services that would replace current illegal downloading. Music retailer 7digital says some of them have approached it about creating new subscription offerings like…

—ITV: ITV’s (LSE: ITV) odd ITVLocal.com offering is doing data partnerships with two other sites in a desperate attempt to hit its target of £150 million online revenue by 2010. It will offer a rebadged version of ThinkProperty.com’s property search as well as another with bill switching site uSwitch, a…