Ben Drury, Co-Founder and CEO

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 7digital 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 Kane, Co-Founder

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 country’s 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.

 

Will England, CFO

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).

 

 

Stephen Somerville, Commercial Director

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, which reached more than 1.2 million subscribers. Prior to this, Stephen was Business Development Manager at Yahoo! UK & Ireland.

 

 

Alyssa Tisne, VP Strategic Partnerships

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 digitisation 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.

 

Ian Bell, Director of Content and Operations

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 17 million tracks and maintaining its market leading content management practices.

 

 

Vickie Nauman, President – North America

Vickie Nauman specialises in digital media and content strategy, the intersection of technology and music, and international business development. Vickie is 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, and marketing for 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.

 

Rob Bowley, Head of Development

Rob started his career as a programmer around the time of the last DotCom bubble. After a couple of small start ups he joined Lycos Europe just as the bubble burst. Before joining 7digital as Principle Developer in April 2009 he also spent time as a Lead Developer at the Lawn Tennis Association and the BBC. Rob brought to 7digital his passion for Agile/Lean delivery and the experience of working on large scale web systems. He took the position of Head of Development in 2010.

 

 

Paul Richards, Systems Manager

Paul joined 7digital in 2009 from Claranet, the largest independent ISP in the UK. Starting in 2001 as a First Line Support Engineer, he worked his way up through the company to become Operations Team Leader for the volume hosting platform. During his tenure at Claranet, he used his spare time to build up a small game service provider called NBKServers, catering for the online PC gaming community and for customers in the UK, Europe and US.

 

 

Dorothée Imhoff, MD of 7digital Europe sarl

Since joining 7digital in 2006, Dorothée has extended the company’s direct-to-consumer offering beyond the UK to the rest of Europe, North America and Asia Pacific, building a talented and successful team in the process. Dorothée is also the MD of 7digital Europe sarl. A truly international profile, Dorothée studied at universities in France, Australia and the UK, graduating with MAs in Business & Foreign Languages and Music Business Management. She comes from an indie label background in Paris via stops at XL Recordings and strategic marketing agency Frukt.