Archive for: imeem
It has now been confirmed that Myspace has closed on its acquisition of Imeem, the music streaming service. It is paying a fire sale price of $1 million, sources familiar with the situation tell me, and could pay up to $7 million to $9 million in earnouts for key employees, who will likely include CEO Dalton Caldwell.
The deal basically values Imeem at around $8 million, even though Sequoia and Warner Music have already pumped $25 million into the venture.
I dont understand why Myspace thought it was a good idea to purchases Imeem! Was it just about the users who are still active on Imeem, cause it definitely wasnt about the technology or the earnings potential.
Im spending a lot of time in the office recently and I’m one of those people who cant work without music playing really loud in the background. I’m sure its not just me who thinks better when music is playing loud, so I thought I would put together a quick list of the top 10 free music streaming service that are currently available. Some of these services can only be used in specific countries, but I’m sure this will change in 2009.
Pandora – Pandora is now just a USA based service. However, Pandora is a great service for those in the USA and im surprised if most people in the USA don’t already use it. Pandora is basically a music radio service which lets you listen to customised radio stations.
Last.fm – I have never really understood Last.fm myself, but they have a great service in which will let you stream music from certain artists. Some have full tracks for free to stream, but others have videos or some nothing at all.
Seeqpod – Seeqpod is basically Google for music. Seepqod is a search engine that allows users to find whatever music they want to listen too. Seeqpod can only find music that can easily be downloaded on the net, so it can be limited with some artists, plus sometimes the tracks might be corrupted and not completely work. However, it is great for making playlists.
Spotify – Spotify is a new music service that has launched out of Sweden. I have been using Spotify for several months now, even though it is in private beta testing. Though the music is streamed, it is played instantly and is partly supported by the famous P2P technology. Currently the service is only available in Finland, France, Norway, Spain, Sweden and UK. Spotify has to be the best music streaming service I have used in 2008.
Myspace Music – Myspace is of course the worlds largest social network and Myspace Music is just an add-on of this social network. With Myspace Music users can search for pretty much any artist in the world and stream the music they have on their profiles. Remember it is limited to only the music the artist wants you to hear.
Rhapsody – Rhapsody has a nice “listen FREE” search option at the top of its homepage, an excellent way to entice people to sign up for its premium service. Once you find the artist you are looking for then you can play any of the songs in their catalogue for free. However, then I realised streaming is only for the USA.
Imeem – Imeem is a mixture between music streaming service and social network. On Imeem to stream music all you need to do is to search for the artist you want to listen to and then the majority of the time they will already have an Imeem account.
Deezer - Deezer is a mixture between Seeqpod and Imeem. Deezer has some social networking aspects but mainly it is just a great music streaming service that is very easy to find the music you are looking for. All music on there is legal and free and artists actually get royalties from your streams.
Skreemr - Skreemr is very similar to Seepqod and it is just basically a search engine for music online. Skreemr is a free service that picks up free music from across the internet and allows you to play it easily. However, unlike Seeqpod they don’t allow users to make playlists.
Lala – Lala is one of the new music streaming services on the block. Lala provides free streaming to only USA users. There is a limit on how many times you can listen to a track for free, but you also have the option of purchasing that stream for $0.10 so then you have can unlimited plays. Additionally, if you want to take the tracks off the site then there is an option of $0.79 for the download.
Imeem is a music social network like no other. Currently, Imeem is the most popular music community in the world and its growth has really been amazing in the last year. Imeem allows artists and users to both have their own profiles and communicated in a social enviroment.
Artists on Imeem can have their own profiles while at the same time make money from their streams on the site. Thus, each time someone listens to an artists tracks the artist receives some royalties, these royalties are based on a percentage of advertising revenues.
Users are able to check out songs from their favourite artists while fill out the basics of a social networking profile. Additional features include mail, creating playlists and more.
Imeem is a great platform that is definitely on the rise, especially in the USA. Look out for more and more changes that im sure they will be bringing to the service in the coming month. The only downside is the quality of advertising on their site! Due to Imeem paying royalties, they must try to each as much advertising revenue as possible for their artists, and in doing so their quality seems to be very poor and lack creativity.
Where do you head when you want to listen to music online without having to download anything or more the point pay for music. Either you head to a bittorrent site (which we will discuss later) or you head to a music streaming service.
Here is a list of the top music streaming services according to Compete. Today we are going to talk about a few of these services and what they can offer you.
Imeem – A streaming service that is based around a social network in the same way as Myspace. Although to me it seems that Myspace has every band in the world online, I still find it hard to believe that Imeem which is growing still gets those sort of numbers. Imeem is completely free to use and you just search for your favourite artist and then you are able to stream certain music direct from their profiles. The problem is that the music is controlled by the artist and normally your favourite tracks wont be online.
Seeqpod – This has to be my favourite streaming music service. Seeqpod is basically the Google of music search engines. Seeqpod searches through the world of mp3s and lets you stream them by using their service. Some tracks are sometimes damaged, but they seem to be improving this service over time. Simply type in the artist name or track title and let Seeqpod do the searching for you. Songza is also on the list of top streaming services, but they are using the Seeqpod technology, so please head over to the original site!
Deezer – Deezer is a french based music streaming site that is similar to Seeqpod except they are total legitimate and they pay royalties from streams. Deezer has just signed a deal with Universal publishing, so you will be able to find some of your favourite artists, but there are still a lot missing. Deezer is also trying to build a community around their streaming product, with music news and basic social networking options. Deezer is one service to keep your eye on in the future!
It has just been announced by Imeem that they are now supporting OpenSocial on the Imeem Media Platform (http://www.imeem.com/developers).
Here is what imeem is releasing today:
· Full support for the core OpenSocial JavaScript APIs, including access to people and relationships on imeem as well as access to data persistence APIs
· Added support for the OpenSocial gadget xml, making it easy for developers to specify their entire application in the OpenSocial gadget xml standard
· imeem-specific OpenSocial extensions, making it possible for developers to access imeem’s media metadata through the OpenSocial JavaScript APIs. This includes the ability to get back a specific user’s media, search for media in imeem’s vast media library, as well as get access to music, video, and photo content on imeem.
Developers will be able to port their existing OpenSocial applications and place them into the Imeem network. Currently Imeem has over 24 milion users and this is now sure to increase because of this integration. OpenSocial is now reaching over 300 million users every month and Google just keep signing new member every month.
There has been a lot in the last few days about the announcement by Last.fm about there new business model. Their business model has moved from 30 second clips of songs to full length streams. This however has a restriction of only 3 streams per song per artist. This is a major negative point with the new business model, because once you really get into a song I know I tend to play mine 10 times a day. All these announcements came on the back end of Last.fm signing content agreements will all four major labels.
Artists will be monetized by these streams through the advertising revenue made by the site. I know for a long time Imeem has been attempting to do exactly the same business model and they have had a great deal of success with this. Imeem now has all four major labels signed up and they are making a great deal of money off of the advertising model. Last.fm has also announced that their new revenue model is not exclusive to only the major labels, and anyone on Last.fm can now opt-in and stream their full music for very low royalties.
This all being said I would have really like to see Last.fm slightly change their model. I dont see why there is a limit on the amount of streams per song, unless they have an additional model that allows members to sign up at an additional fee to be able to play the song unlimited times. It is also good to see that Last.fm has partnered with 7digital to offer the music downloads, however a long term solution for Last.fm must be to kill this partnership and enter the download market independently, this might even be a threat to iTunes!
I am still not convinved by Last.fm. The have a great piece of technology in the scrobbler, but I dont think their professionalism on that software has carried over to the site, monetization options and also profile and social network strategy.
Imeem, the service that offers a widget for sharing your music playlist, has reached a deal with Sony BMG to legally offer their music to users. In exchange for allowing Imeem users stream Sony BMG music in their widgets, the record label will get a cut of the advertising revenue. Imeem previously signed a similar deal with Warner Music, after the record company first tried to sue them.
Imeem has already signed with RouteNote. RouteNote has a private beta test launching next month, so make sure you signup.
It has now been confirmed that Myspace has closed on its acquisition of Imeem, the music streaming service. It is paying a fire sale price of $1 million, sources familiar with the situation tell me, and could pay up to $7 million to $9 million in earnouts for key employees, who will likely include CEO Dalton Caldwell.
