Much like its main competitor Shazam, SoundHound "listens" to a song that's playing and then checks the audio sample against a large database of music to determine what the song is called and who it's by. It can even determine the name of a song based on users humming or singing it into the app, although the accuracy of the results can vary.

The partnership gives both services at least a slight advantage over its competitors, as Spotify gains a new source of potential subscribers and SoundHound tacks on a feature that sets it apart from similar services. Shazam, for example, lets users purchase tracks from iTunes , but they can't stream them instantaneously without paying for and downloading them individually.

This feature only works for Spotify Premium users and for now, appears to only be available in Europe.

According to Shazam's CEO Andrew Fisher, the service now has 20 million users on the iOS platform (up from 15 million in October). As usual, it is hard to pinpoint how many of these are active users, but there can be little doubt that Shazam is one of the iPhone app ecosystem's biggest success stories. Earlier this year, Fisher told TechRadar.com that Shazam was identifying about 2 million songs per day and that it was selling roughly 160,000 tracks daily. Now, with a significantly larger user base, chances are that these numbers are even higher.

Today, YouTube is getting into the music recommendation and discovery game with an update to its music page.

This latest offering has a similar feel and, in some ways, feels like getting a bit of MTV back from the 90s, when it actually played music. Unlike sites like Pandora or HypeMachine, the big advantage here is visual - welcome back to watching a streaming feed of music videos, not just listening to songs. The new page "showcases the most viewed music videos, special promotions, curated playlists, unsigned talent and gives you the ability to create on-the-fly mixes." It also lets you simply chose a genre and go, letting the site pick the music from there. According to the blog, we can also look forward to local music listings in the near future.

To visit YouTube's redesigned music page, go to www.youtube.com/music.

Features

Rhapsody has all the features you would probably want from a streaming music app. Browsing by genres, charts, or simply searching for artists and specific tracks is easy and fast. Once you have found something you like, you can also easily add it to your 'library' so that you can find it quickly at a later point. Rhapsody also offers radio stations based on genres or artists, similar to what the Slacker Radio and Pandora apps offer on the iPhone.

One thing we especially like about the app is how easy it is to manage and create playlists. While this feature is somewhat hidden - you have to keep pressing the name of a song or album for a second or two for the right menu to pop up - it does give you the ability to create a library of songs you like and to manage playlists.

We are not quite sure at what rate Rhapsody is actually streaming this music to the iPhone, but at least over Wi-Fi and the AT&T 3G network, the sound quality is quite good.

Rhapsody vs. Spotify

In the US, Rhapsody is currently the only game in town when it comes to on-demand music streaming. Unlike Spotify, Rhapsody doesn't offer an offline mode, thanks to the arcane licensing restrictions the music industry still favors, and is only available in a select number of markets in Europe at this point. Maybe later versions will feature this ability - especially given that Apple has now allowed the Spotify app into the App Store.

Once Spotify launches in the US App Store, however, Rhapsody will come under a lot of pressure, especially if Rhapsody doesn't offer offline storage at that point. Currently, Rhapsody does offer more songs (8 million vs. 4.5 million) and the prices are similar (€9.99 vs. $15).

Free Trial

Signing up for the free 7-day trial is easy and doesn't require a credit card, so if you are on the fence about trying Rhapsody out, just install the app and follow the instructions from the home screen. Apple just pointed out that it doesn't believe in music subscriptions during its annual iPod event yesterday, but depending on your listening habits, a $14.99 subscription per month might actually turn out to be a pretty good deal.

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.

We're busy. We don't have time to troll a half dozen websites for bands we like at venues that are nearby with showtimes that are convenient from ticket outlets that give us a good deal - there are far too many moving parts involved in that equation. As a result, even though we're huge music fans and/or love going out, we rarely get to see good, live music. Fortunately, from now on, Livekick can help us. Read on for a video interview with the founders and a thorough product demo.

And here's a lengthy product demo for those who prefer to see how the site works in action:

In short, Livekick mashes up geographical data, data from music listening and sharing sites, and data from concert ticket sites, and information and content from many other sources to create a perfect storm of concert-attending efficiency. Pages even have YouTube videos of an artist's live performances, just so the would-be ticket buyer knows exactly what he's getting into. And if your favorite band has broken up, Livekick keeps track of the metadata to recommend band members' current projects, instead.

Signup is simple. Importing data from iTunes, Last.fm, and other music sites can take a few minutes, but the huge payoff (not having to remember or enter any band information or preferences) is huge.

Best of all, finding concerts, sharing show dates, and purchasing tickets are all lightning fast processes. Email and Twitter updates are available for those who need to be reminded or notified when they're away from the site.

Yarden shared with me that since he, himself, started using Livekick, he's been averaging about two concerts a month. For a busy guy with a startup to think about, this is nothing short of miraculous.

In the right hands, the product will make for money-making widgets for labels and bands and time-saving ones for friends who would like to share and plan events.

The service now also shows display ads on its website, which, to be honest, don't seem to fit into the general design of the site and look like they were just added for the sake of it.

In the Bloomberg interview, Westergreen also acknowledged that Pandora's struggle with the music industry to negotiate royalty rates could still stop the company from becoming profitable, though Westergreen also said that he is optimistic that these negotiations will come to a positive conclusion for Pandora.