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In a direct challenge to MySpace Music, Bebo will announce at midnight UK time (about now) that it is to start selling music downloads. All the bands on Bebo Bands will have the option to sell songs through a widget supplied by 7digital.
[img src="" caption="" credit="" alt=""]7digital, which we've mentioned only briefly in the past, is a UK-based music downloads service that launched the "indiestore" widget a few months back. The inclusion of the widget in Bebo will be huge for them, adding sales from Bebo's 450,000 registered bands, and enabling them to sell to Bebo's supposed 31 million users. Bebo Bands will be able to create a Starter indiestore account, which will allow them to sell four tracks, or a Pro account, which supports 20 tracks.
The widget itself will presumably become part of Bebo Widgets, and you can see it in action on the Bebo pages for The Killers and Muse. The store supports PayPal, Click & Buy and SMS purchases, and launches only a few days after the appearance of Victoria's Widget, an SMS widget for Bebo users. However, it seems that you have to click through to a secondary site to make purchases: there's no pricing on the widget, as there is on Snocap.
Suffice to say, this could be a big money earner for both Bebo and 7digital, and creates the first real rival to the Snocap-MySpace partnership. In fact, we're surprised that Snocap didn't land this one.