Management Team
Ben began his career in 1996 as a founder of dotmusic.com, an internal venture at United News and Media. Dotmusic quickly became a leading online music destination attracting over 1.8m unique users per month (in 1999). In 2000 Ben was headhunted by BT Group to head up the broadband music efforts at their ISP BT Openworld. As Head of Music at BT, Ben successfully launched a major music channel before leading the acquisition of his old company dotmusic in 2002. At BT, Ben pioneered music and video downloads on dotmusic with the UK’s first unlimited subscription offer. Following the partnership between BT and Yahoo! to form BT Yahoo! in 2003, Ben engineered the sale of dotmusic to Yahoo!
In January 2004, Ben founded 7 Digital with James Kane. Ben is currently on the board of the Entertainment Retailers Association and the Official Charts Company. Outside work, Ben enjoys mountaineering, squash and playing guitar and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). Ben graduated from King’s College London with BSc (Hons) Physics with Philosophy of Science.
James worked in the new media department of United News and Media on a variety of titles before finding his way to dotmusic.com. James was instrumental in turning dotmusic from another trade magazine website to Europe's leading consumer online music destination. Having found early success with legitimate music download services at dotmusic by creating one of the countries first music commerce platforms and later the UK's first legal unlimited music subscription service. James then founded 7digital with Ben Drury in 2004 with the vision of creating a digital media marketplace. Tapping into the burgeoning demand for digital media, 7digital operates services that bring together suppliers and consumers of digital media.
Will England has over 15 years' experience gained from financial and management positions with KPMG (where he trained) and a number of start-up organisations including The Wisden Group and now 7digital. Will played a key role in The Wisden Group's transition to a profitable organisation and the subsequent sales of Cricinfo.com to ESPN and The Wisden Cricketer magazine to BSkyB. He spent the first four years of his working life touring the UK with a number of theatre companies as Production Manager (and van driver).
Prior to joining 7digital, Stephen was Commercial Manager at UKTV for more than three years, working across a network of 10 channels to maximise revenue from the UKTV portfolio. Before this, Stephen was head of programming for UPC TV’s four premium Sport Channels in Central Europe reaching more than 1.2 million subscribers. Prior to this, Stephen was Business Development Manager at Yahoo! UK & Ireland.
Dan Rough joined 7digital in 2008 from BBC Worldwide where he spent the last 2 and a half years as a Development Manager within their internal IT consultancy. He comes from a development background and has a wealth of experience in introducing Lean and agile practices at both enterprise and SME level organisations. More information can be found here:
http://linkedin.com/in/danrough and http://danrough.wordpress.com
Alyssa began her career in digital music at Real Networks in 2003, assisting during the acquisition of Rhapsody. She subsequently joined Wilson Sonsini as a summer associate when the firm represented Google in its IPO. Prior to her legal training, Alyssa worked for Wall Street firms Merrill Lynch and Sidley Austin. In London, Alyssa joined the New Media and Technology division of the BBC and was involved in the digitsiation and monetisation of archive content. She holds an MBA from the University of Oxford, a JD from the University of Washington, and BA degrees from the University of Alaska Anchorage.
Starting on the shop floor at HMV, Ian swapped shelf-stacking for database-filling when he helped to establish Muze in Europe from 1999. After a brief spell at PIAS, he resumed the role of self-styled Data Tsar by joining a nascent 7digital in 2005. Ian has been instrumental in overseeing 7digital's catalogue growth to over 8 million tracks and maintaining its market leading content management practices.
Vickie Nauman specializes in digital media and content strategy, the intersection of technology and music, and international business development. Vickie is Vice President-North America for 7digital, and most recently led the global content strategy and partnerships for Sonos, the wireless digital music system for the home, and ran the consultancy CrossBorderWorks. Prior work includes creating the online strategy and service for boutique Seattle music station KEXP, content development for RealNetworks/MusicNet, marketing in the National Public Radio network, and Procter and Gamble. She has a broad network and experience in Europe, China, and North America, and earned a 2006 MBA through the London School of Economics, New York University, and HEC-Paris, in the collaborative executive program TRIUM.