The album collection combines weighted rankings - based on submitted top 10 lists from 550 MP3 blogs - with a widget from Grooveshark to listen to the album, and a Creative Commons photo of each band. It's quite nice. The newest addition to the project is unusually low-tech; it's artist renditions of the top 50 musical artists of the year.

This year's Hype Machine Zeitgeist is another example of the awesome potential of free online music combined with smart technology and excellent design. Check it out and be inspired. Is this era the end of the music industry? It sure doesn't need to be.

The acquisition was announced just yesterday, and developers were given no warning that their creations would become useless digital paperweights overnight. Among the detrius of the deal is twt.fm, a popular Twitter music-sharing app created by web dev Lee Martin, who tipped us off to his plight today in a blog post.

UPDATE: Users are also reporting problems with blip.fm, a popular music-streaming site that integrated results from iMeem.

"They represented the music business of the future. Now they are a forced hyperlink to a... MySpace landing page making false promises and giving no guidance or help for the developer community they just destroyed.

"Maybe MySpace will return my open streaming API platform... Until then, I'll be brushing the dust off my 1999 Dell computer and getting ready to program music websites like I did 10 years ago."

If indeed MySpace doesn't give developers back their iMeem API, will another streaming music service step in to fill that void? Pandora CEO Tim Westergren revealed in a recent interview that because of licensing issues, Pandora is nowhere close to releasing an open API. Last.fm has an API that allows for web, desktop and mobile development - and it's ironic that Last might have the last API for music mashup developers.

While we wait for comment from MySpace HQ, let us know in the comments what you think of this news, especially if you're a developer who has been using iMeem's API.

Eager North Americans have been waiting for the Spotify service to launch stateside; nevertheless, because the company looks to sign major label deals before its American release, there is no hard date for launch. According to paidContent, "Spotify hopes to launch in the U.S. in Q3 or Q4." Meanwhile, Florida-based Grooveshark just launched a premium service available to both US and international members, and an iPhone service has been submitted to the App store. While Grooveshark's current app does not allow for cached offline music, the company plans to incorporate this feature in an upcoming version. Not to be outdone, Rhapsody also submitted an iPhone app early this week. If Spotify launches in the US when Grooveshark's cached music app becomes available, it will be an interesting battle for streaming music supremacy.

Big words indeed. To see if that You Tube comparison was justified, let's check back in with Imeem one year later and assess how they're doing now.

The tale of the tape is usually a good indication of growth; and according to Compete Imeem has actually declined by 10.5% in unique visitors this past year. The chart below doesn't include Facebook and MySpace, because they are much larger than Imeem. While Imeem is still larger than last.fm and Pandora, the chart below shows a definite dip - whereas last.fm and Pandora grew.

If we add in MySpace and Facebook, you can see the gulf between Imeem and the other two large social network players. We also see the massive growth of Facebook over the past year; it passed MySpace in Dec '08 - Jan '09 according to this data.

Statistics don't tell the whole story of course, however we've also seen other evidence of problems at Imeem. The company appears to be under pressure financially - in October '08, Imeem laid off 25% of its staff. The product is also under strain. In late June this year we reported that Imeem will remove photos and videos from its features, in order to simplify the service and focus on the service's core social music features. That move did not go down well with Imeem users.

We also note a relative dearth of news this year - just 2 news announcements at Imeem so far this year (into the 8th month), both about Imeem Mobile. Our review of Imeem Mobile was tepid.

We don't want to be too negative. There's much still to like about Imeem - its design has improved and the list of record labels is impressive. But it's obvious that the hype that we saw one year ago (including our own comparison to YouTube!) just hasn't panned out.

With Miley Cyrus now draped all over the Imeem homepage and Jonas Brothers in the default playlist, it seems that the site is now aiming to attract the teeny bopper audience that perhaps MySpace and other online music sites don't serve too well. That's great, but it's far from the diverse mainstream audience that Facebook and MySpace attract.

Unfortunately, Imeem is heading the wrong way in terms of its growth. And there are newer, arguably better music streaming services rising up - Spotify has gotten rave reviews so far from international markets and it's about to launch in the U.S.

Can Imeem turn it around? Let us know your thoughts on Imeem in the comments.

Billboard.com currently attracts about 4 million unique visitors each month. Compare that to the conservative Quantcast estimates of MOG at 7.7 million monthly visitors and Imeem at a whopping 16 million monthly uniques. Although it is expected that Billboard will see a traffic spike due to its recent web redesign, it's doubtful that it will increase its numbers to rival those of today's top music communities. We need to remember that while Billboard is still a reputable music industry news source, it is completely irrelevant to cool hunters.

By the time a single reaches Billboard's charts and gets featured for streaming, Hype Machine and Imeem users are more than familiar with them. In fact, they've probably grown bored with the multiple remixes and have decided to form a backlash movement against them. Let's face it, Billboard, Spin and Rolling Stone magazine have become irrelevant to the younger generation of music fans. In fact, Forbes just published a story on how music network Pitchfork is replacing them. And you know if Forbes thinks Pitchfork is the next big thing, then the über hip have already left in droves.

One of Threadless' top selling shirts bares the slogan, "I listen to bands that don't even exist yet." If you're on the bleeding edge of music, you probably want to stick to your favorite music site rather than switching to the bubblegum selection of Billboard's mainstream offerings.

According to Forbes journalist, Javier Espinoza, "Another looming threat [to Spotify]: Microsoft is launching a very similar music streaming service later in July, a service that also allows users to download the music, something Spotify still won't allow members to do." Nevertheless, the question is, will Microsoft be able to provide cross-format support and separate itself from its lackluster music devices in order to build a site that consumers will enjoy? If it can't, Spotify will have nothing to worry about.

Besides, in late June, Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek made the following statement to the Register, " We're working on a one-click download solution with 7Digital, press buy, press OK and you buy a recording. My hope is to get it out in the next couple of months."

Demonstrated at Google's late May I/O conference, Spotify's Android already caches music for easy offline play. An iPhone app version is already reportedly in the works.

If you can play all of your favorite music from your cached play list, how important is it for the average user to have the access to the original file? Below is a look at the current Android app, let us know your listening habits in the comments below.

Update: Matt Graves, imeem's VP of marketing and communications, left a comment below. Comments on the imeem blog post are now open, VIP subscribers will be able to get a refund.

The original post continues below:

Unhappy Users and VIPs

It's not surprising, however, that imeem's users are quite vocal about their dissatisfaction with the service's decision to delete the photo and video collections that many have poured quite a few hours of work into over the years. A lot of users are especially outraged by this because they specifically subscribed to imeem's VIP service in order to upload more of their own videos and photos. It's also noteworthy that imeem isn't giving users an easy way to download their content from the site. While users could right-click on every picture and save it to their desktop, there is currently no way to download videos from the site.

Not Handled Well

Overall, we would have to side with imeem's users and it doesn't look like the company is handling this current affair very well. Comments on the blog post are closed, nobody from imeem's staff (as far as we can see) is interacting with customers on imeem's forums, and the service isn't giving paying customers a chance to get a refund. imeem, of course, is under some pressure to make a profit at some point, and the service's relationship with the music industry has been rather rocky lately, but this decision to give users only five days of warning before deleting their content on the site just feels like a textbook case for how not to manage your user community.

Upload with AIR - Play Over the Air

You upload your music with an Adobe AIR app which allows you to upload songs directly from your hard-drive, but also has a convenient option that lets you browse your iTunes library to pick songs you want to transfer to imeem. In our tests those uploads worked just as expected and went relatively fast. The sounds quality was also surprisingly good.

Similar to the iPhone apps from Pandora, Last.fm, and and Slacker Radio, you can also easily create custom radio stations, though the functions here feel a bit limited compared to the options that imeem competitors now offer.

Like its competitors, the app suffers from the fact that it can't play in the background on the iPhone. Sadly, imeem also doesn't remember where it left off after you exit the app.

Pricing

You can store up to 100 songs, 10 videos, and an unlimited amount of photos on imeem for free. For $30 a year, you can upload up to 1000 songs and 100 videos, and $100 a year buys you storage for 20,000 songs and 500 videos.

Alternatives

We are also big fans of Lala, which allows you to listen to all of your songs online without any restrictions. Sadly, though, Lala does not offer a mobile application.

If you want full access to the music on your desktop while on the go, Simplify Music 2.0 also does a great job at streaming your collection over WiFi, Edge, and 3G. One of the nice features of the Simplify Music app (iTunes link) is that it gives users easy access to lyrics and artist biographies. Imeem only provides access to artist biographies.

Verdict

Given the quality of the apps that imeem's competitors have released, this app still has a bit to go before it can fulfill all of its promises. However, if you are looking for a simple way to expand the capacity of your iPhone or Android phone then imeem might be worth a look, especially if you don't keep your music on a home server where you can easily access it with Simplify Media or Simplify Music.

• After submitting our registration, the page refreshed to a new, blank registration form. Nowhere did it mention that our information had been submitted, and as far as we could tell, we weren't automatically logged in.
• The getting started page recommends either adding an MP3 URL (no uploading directly to the service allowed) or dragging the ffffoundtape bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar. We didn't have a bunch of MP3 URLs sitting around so it was off to the Obscure Sound indie music blog to find some tracks.
• Invoking the bookmarklet on any page that has links to MP3 files exposes a little arrow that can be clicked to listen to the MP3. After that, another click is necessary to actually bookmark the MP3.
• The bookmark page is identical to the page to submit an MP3 URL, and no information is auto-populated.
• Once back on the ffffoundtape page, we were able to view the songs we bookmarked, and optionally remove them. That's it.
• We could create a playlist using a separate page. Once created, we were still unable to add bookmarks to that playlist.
• Eventually we went back to our profile page, and found the songs we had bookmarked. Only on profile and public all-tracks pages could we add music to a playlist. If we remembered to create a playlist first.
• Finally, we were able to view, enjoy, and share our playlist page.

Unless this service really takes a hard look at streamlining this process, it is probably not worth investing too much time in it. Besides the multiple steps required to bookmark and organize tracks, it appears the service may not even store the MP3s, preferring to play them from the original source web pages. We understand this may be an issue of liability, but it also means that ffffoundtape may eventually be rife with broken links. Also, there's no way of exposing the source page of the tracks unless you remember to cut and paste the page URL when creating the bookmark. Finally, there's no export option, hence no way of storing your carefully found list of tracks offline.

The upside is, if you just want to browse and add other ffffoundtape bookmarks to your own playlists, it's relatively simple. Even there, though, once a track is added you get redirected to your playlist page and must navigate back to where you were. However, you can add a cover art image to each playlist.

Our recommendation? Stick with last.fm, iMeem, blip.fm, song.ly, or even Tumblr. If you want a second opinion, check out SheGeek's post on ffffoundtape.

• Facebook is the largest social network in the world with well over 100 million monthly active users
• Rival MySpace has recently launched MySpace Music, and is currently more profitable than Facebook
• Facebook is rumored to be partnering with either iLike, imeem, LaLa, or Rhapsody

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/rww_predictions_facebook_music_coming_soon.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/rww_predictions_facebook_music_coming_soon.php Predictions Sun, 26 Oct 2008 19:14:22 -0800 Corvida Looking back at the SanFran MusicTech Summit earlier this week, a few notable moments stand out that reflect on the state of the digital music business and how a new crop of startups may shape its future.

Perhaps the greatest challenges to companies like MySpace Music and Facebook may not be from the big players, but startups that offer artists greater control over their work and pricing flexibility.

]]> In one of the sessions, I asked a panel of digital music executives how they see business faring when revenue comes from advertising. Anthony Batt of Buzznet said he was too busy thinking about the fourth quarter. "I'm not an economist," Batt said. I pressed and asked what they were projecting for 2009. He said the market looks "uncertain." Josh Brooks, vice president of MySpace Music, said that as the economy worsens, people will spend less money on entertainment. They will spend more time at home. They will go online more often. Advertisers will want to reach those people where they are spending their time.

This is fair picture. Forecasts generally call for moderate growth in online advertising through 2009. eMarketer expects the market to increase 14.5 percent in 2009.

Even with this outlook, digital music companies face challenges above and beyond what lies ahead with the economy.

MySpace Music is definitely the big player, but criticism about the service ranges from a poor UI to how they treat indie labels. Add to that a potential competitor like Facebook and the issues intensify. Brooks took repeated questions about why they gave the major labels preferential treatment. Brooks said that MySpace Music will phase in new services to provide the indies more of a presence. That reality materialized today. Digital music distributor IODA has signed on to make its catalog available on MySpace Music.

But perhaps the greatest challenges to companies like MySpace Music and Facebook may not be from the big players, but startups that offer artists greater control over their work and pricing flexibility.

Rise of the Band Blogs?

Of the startups that presented at the conference. Bandcamp received some of the highest acclaim. BandCamp is a blog platform designed for musicians. The platform is similar to Blogger or Wordpress but with limited flexibility. The service is free. Sites are designed for search engine optimization. The site has a Flash player but everything around it is HTML. BandCamp includes an analytics platform that details page views, music sales and what tracks musicians played. The service integrates with Paypal. Tracks may be offered for free.

Artists determine the price for their music. The artist uploads their tracks as .AIF or .WAV files. BandCamp converts the file and then offers the artist a selection of different formats for their play list. Artists may choose to sell the music as an mp3, for instance, at a high or low bit rate, setting the price accordingly. There even appears to be the ability to do variable pricing, something the majors have wanted to do for quite some time. BandCamp takes no cut from the sale. Musicians host their own sites.

For BandCamp Founder Ethan Diamond, the service is about giving artists control. He likes to call themselves the "very nerdy" fifth Beatle who takes care of all the geeky stuff so the band may do what they do best.

In his presentation, Diamond sharply criticized the practices of companies that do not provide artists with complete ownership of their works. Diamond has said before that Imeem and MySpace Music both fit into this camp. The companies that engage in this practice he called "online sharecroppers."

Already The Dynamics Are Changing

Steve Jang, vice president of marketing and business development at imeem, sat on the panel with Brooks and Batt. He seemed pretty quiet compared to his colleagues.

He must have had a lot on his mind, listening to his counterparts talk about the business. As we reported this week, Imeem is up for sale. They've laid off 25 percent of their staff. Warner Bros, as you may recall, sued Imeem earlier this year. They later dropped the suit in exchange for an equity stake in the company.

And so, who will purchase Imeem? Is this a play for Facebook?

Oh, these times are a changin'. :-)

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/questions_for_digital_music_business.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/questions_for_digital_music_business.php Events Guide Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:45:40 -0800 Alex Williams According to PaidContent, Imeem, one of our favorite streaming music services, is starting to feel the pressure of the economic downturn and is planning to lay off a quarter of its workforce. According to this report, Imeem is also looking for a potential candidate to buy the company.

Imeem is one of Sequoia's portfolio companies, so it doesn't come as a surprise that it is looking to keep its budget under control, but we do think that Imeem is going to have a hard time finding a buyer in these tough economic times.

]]>

Update: We just got a response from Imeem. The company is indeed laying off 25% of its staff (20 positions) in order to cut cost, but wouldn't comment on the rumors around a potential sale of the company.

Imeem's last funding round was a Series C round led by Sequoia in April, though the company did not reveal the actual amount of this investment. Warner Brothers also invested about $15 million in Imeem. Imeem has licensing deals with all of the major record labels, as well as with a large number of independents labels.

$200 Million

While Imeem's valuation is a bit hard to estimate, PaidContent reports that Imeem and its investors would be looking for somewhere "north of $200 million." Given the current economic climate and the strong competition in the streaming music business, $200 million might be a rather high number, however, and this will surely scare off quite a few potential buyers.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/rumor_layoffs_at_imeem_and_a_p.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/rumor_layoffs_at_imeem_and_a_p.php News Wed, 22 Oct 2008 13:35:41 -0800 Frederic Lardinois Visual search engine SearchMe just added music search to its repertoire of search options. That, by itself, wouldn't be very interesting, but thanks to integrating this new search feature with Imeem's ability to play back an unlimited number of full songs and SearchMe's 'Stacks' functionality, you can now use SearchMe to easily create custom mixtapes.

SearchMe, which combines a search engine with a highly visual, CoverFlow-like interface, has seen rapid growth over the last few months and this new feature will surely help the company to attract even more users.

]]> Mixtapes

One of the best features of SearchMe's new music search is that it automatically plays the next item after a song is finished. Thanks to SearchMe's 'stacks,' which are basically SearchMe's more visual take on bookmarks, you can now use SearchMe to build your own mixtapes and integrate them into your blog or social network page.

Neither Imeem nor SearchMe have made any announcements about a partnership, but it seems likely that SearchMe is just using Imeem's API to power this new feature.

The only negative aspect of this new feature we have found so far is that there doesn't seem to be a way to stop the embedded music stacks from automatically playing as a page is loaded. Because of this, we decided not to embed a custom mixtape in this post, but you can find one here if you want to see (and hear) what this new feature looks like.

SearchMe company profile provided by TradeVibes

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/music_search_and_mixtapes_come_to_searchme.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/music_search_and_mixtapes_come_to_searchme.php Music Mon, 20 Oct 2008 10:59:03 -0800 Frederic Lardinois Music discovery is clearly a hot topic these days, with large companies like Apple and Microsoft competing with smaller services like imeem, Pandora, and Last.fm. With the exception of Pandora, these services typically rely on the listening habits and recommendations of other users.

Mufin.com, however, which launched today, uses a fully automated system that only takes the actual sounds of a song into consideration. In our tests, Mufin often returned good results, but the fact that it doesn't take genres or the quality of a song into account can make for a frustrating experience at times.

]]> Mufin's interface is straightforward and stays out of the user's way. Songs are played through a standard flash player and the AJAX-driven interface is fast and well designed, though it would be nice if you could play similar songs without having to click through to another page.

Eclectic Recommendations

There is something to be said for this completely algorithmic approach. While social recommendation services tend to return results that safely stay within the same genre as the original song, Mufin's choices are far more eclectic. The most closely related song to Rick Astley's seminal "Never Gonna Give You Up," for example, is a song in Bavarian by a German folk pop group. Mufin really seems to like German songs, by the way, as more than half of the songs it recommended as similar to Frank Zappa's "Muffin Man" were from a Sesame Street album in German. In Mufin's defense, though, all these songs were quite similar in style to the original song.

Social Recommendations vs. Algorithms

As MG Siegler points out, the real advantage of social recommendation engines is that they are very good at filtering out bad music (though one might also argue that this can lead to slightly boring recommendations at times). Mufin neither cares about the quality of the music nor its popularity or language; it only looks at characteristics like tempo, instruments, sound density, and harmony.

Limitations

Mufin has already built an extensive library of songs, but it only holds the right to a limited set of them, which means that you simply can't play a lot of the recommended songs. Those songs that can be played are limited to 30-second previews , which can make it hard to decide if a song is really good and similar enough to warrant buying it.

If Mufin had partnered with a service like Rhapsody, for example, users would at least have been able to stream a limited number of full songs every month. Every song on Mufin features a link to iTunes and the Amazon music store.

Overall, we think Mufin is an interesting experiment, but we are not convinced that its algorithms return better recommendations than the more social approach of its competitors or the classification system of the Music Genome Project that drives Pandora's recommendation engine.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mufin_eclectic_music_recommend.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mufin_eclectic_music_recommend.php Product Reviews Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:39:53 -0800 Frederic Lardinois This week we interviewed one of the founders of online music service last.fm, Richard "Mr Scrobble" Jones. We wanted to find out last.fm's reaction to the launch of MySpace Music and the rise of Imeem, discuss business models in online music, and find out what's new at last.fm. We're running the interview in 3 parts, over 3 days. See also Part 2, on business models and Part 3, on design and features.

We started out by asking about the increasing competition in online music this year.

]]> RWW: As you know the competition in the online music sphere has gotten more intense this year. MySpace Music has just launched, Imeem has been growing in popularity in large part because of its music features (it also released a re-design today), Pandora continues to grow its market share despite legislative challenges. So can you tell us what you think differentiates last.fm from those services?

RJ: The space is crowded, I agree, and people now have a lot of choice if they want to listen to music for free. That's great for music fans - but what it means is that navigating through that mass of music is now the priority for them. It's all very well having millions of tracks at your disposal on Myspace or Imeem, but what's the use if you can't find what you want?

We have a unique recommendation system, drawing on the data of over 43 million individual songs, and the listening habits of 25 million music fans, enabling us to guide users through a 5 million + catalogue of freely streamable tracks and help them find stuff suited to their taste.

Recommendation and discovery is key in this space now - and we've been working on this for 6 years, and every day we continue to refine the process, so we're confident that we can continue to offer a better, more personalised music experience than anyone else online.

RWW: One of the things that's made Imeem a success this year - it's reportedly now the No. 1 streaming music site in the US - has been its licensing deal with all 4 of the major record labels, plus by their estimates around 80% of the indie music market. MySpace Music has 3 of the majors and has been criticized for its lack of attention to the independents. Can you clarify for our readers where last.fm sits in terms of licensing with the 4 majors and independents?

RJ: We have music from 3 of the majors, and renegotiations with Warner are ongoing. Our indie catalogue is equivalent to Imeem's - it includes millions of tracks from IODA, The Orchard, CD Baby and thousands of independent labels and artists - and we are currently in negotiations with Merlin. We continue to aim for the most comprehensive music catalogue online, and are making great progress towards that.

What's even more important, though, with regards to this point, is that we ensure all labels and artists are paid when their music is streamed on the site - and since the launch of our Artist Royalty Program, that means unsigned and DIY artists too. No one else is offering a share of revenue to unsigned musicians in this way.

RWW: You recently released a new version of the last.fm iphone app -- how crucial do you think mobile apps will be when competing against the likes of MySpace, Imeem and Pandora? Do you think you have any advantages over your rivals in this area?

We want the Last.fm experience to be accessible everywhere, so mobile is hugely important to us. At the moment the iPhone dominates, and our only competition there is really Pandora, which is limited to the US whereas our app is available in the US, UK, Canada, Germany, Spain and France, with more countries to come. Plus it's much more feature-rich and draws on a much larger music catalogue.

It's a cool app and I think it's the one that real passionate music fans choose because we really reach into the Long Tail in the music we play.

See also: Interview With Last.fm Founder Richard Jones: Part 2, Business Models and Part 3, Design & Features

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/interview_with_lastfm_founder_richard_jones_part1.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/interview_with_lastfm_founder_richard_jones_part1.php Interviews Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:32:10 -0800 Richard MacManus