Last night we released the finalist names for the Crunchies Awards. Vote here for who you think should win. We’ve set up a site that is pretty self-explanatory, with all of the names of each finalist for every category, along with links to their Websites and Crunchbase profiles where you can learn more about each one before voting. The Crunchies represents the best the Web had to offer in 2008… → Read More
Music streaming service Project Playlist has 40 million users if you believe their home page, or around 10 million if you go by Comscore unique monthly visitors. Either way, it’s a lot. They’ve got a hot new CEO, raised a big round of financing, and finally signed a deal with a big label.
But they’re also in a very vulnerable position right now. Litigation with the other three labels continues… → Read More
Just in via Twitter: Pandora has registered its 20 millionth user. The three-year old music streaming service is trying to hold its own despite tough economics and recent layoffs.
Its music-recommendation engine pumps out personalized radio stations over the Web, and its iPhone app remains one the top free apps on iTunes (currently No. 21). → Read More
Today, CBS Interactive is laying off people across several of its properties, I’ve confirmed with the company. CBS is not saying which divisions or how many people are affected. It is positioning the layoffs as part of the integration process it began six months ago when it bought CNET for $1.8 billion. But it is not just the CNET businesses that are being cut.
I’ve also confirmed that… → Read More
Pop sensation-turned-tabloid punching bag Britney Spears is ready for her comeback. Britney has just released her new album Circus exclusively on imeem, where you can stream the album in its entirety for free (you’ll also be able to embed the album playlist anywhere you’d like). The downloadable/physical version of the album won’t be available until December 2nd, but you can currently… → Read More
This has been a brutal month or so for tech layoffs. According to our Layoff Tracker, there have been 19,683 job eliminations at tech companies announced since mid-September, and we’re not even counting the 24,600 people at Hewlett-Packard who are being eliminated as a result of its merger with EDS.
But only five big companies make up more than 90 percent of the layoffs: Xerox (3,000), Dell… → Read More
We’ve confirmed PaidContent’s report from earlier today that music startup Imeem has laid off 20 employees, or 25% of its total staff.
PR representative Matt Graves gave a now-familiar explanation for the cuts:
Given the current economic climate, we decided to be proactive in cutting costs – before we needed to – for the long-term benefit of the business.
The company did not confirm reports… → Read More
What good is an endless jukebox in the sky if you can only listen to it while you are sitting in front of your computer? Imeem answers that with what is certainly the best Android app I’ve seen (or heard) so far. It’s called imeem Mobile, and it is the musically-oriented social network’s first foray into the mobile arena.
Imeem is one of the few music Websites with streaming licenses from all… → Read More
Okay, this has to be the coolest hack of the week. Visual search engine SearchMe has just added a music search tab that brings back results with free, legal, unlimited full-song streams and cover art you can flip through. It’s CoverFlow on the Web. And it actually trumps the experience one Yahoo’s music search, which also offers free full streams through Rhapsody—but those are limited to 25… → Read More
Nokia announced their Comes With Music program last month, a media download offering with backing from Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, EMI, and Universal Music Group. The system, along with the Nokia Music Store, has about 5 million tracks currently available and Nokia has announced the Music PC client for easy downloads. You can drag CDs into the application for immediate ripping. Comes With Music… → Read More
Yesterday, CBS sent out a press release touting the success of Last.fm’s month-old redesign, citing a 20 percent increase in unique visitors and a 36 percent increase in total minutes between June and July. Despite a few bugs on the day of launch, the redesign seems to be paying off. But why is CBS so keen on beating its chest when it comes to Last.fm? Ever since CBS bought Last.fm in May… → Read More
The music industry’s attempts to create its own digital distribution business is like a bad horror movie. It just keeps coming back no matter how badly bludgeoned it gets. Back in 2001 in response to Napster, the music labels launched two competing music download sites, PressPlay and MusicNet (the latter became a white-label music service called MediaNet. Meanwhile, Pressplay was bought by… → Read More
MOG has announced that it received a $2.8M strategic investment from Universal Music Group and The Angels’ Forum. We’ve also heard that Sony BMG was also part of the round, which means two major record labels have come together to invest in the same online music venture. Music afficianados can use MOG to blog about their favorite artists and tracks. It also provides software that… → Read More
After a long search that turned up no other buyers, Shawn Fanning’s startup Snocap is being bought by music social network imeem. We first reported the deal in February. Imeem is officially announcing the deal today. Terms are not being disclosed, but we believe it was less than $5 million—a fire sale price compared to the $10 more than $25 million that was invested in Snocap. Fanning, most… → Read More
We’ve confirmed through sources that MySpace has settled the pending litigation Universal Music, albeit in a very unique way. They’ll create a new MySpace Music joint venture, with equity stakes from all the major labels (except EMI, which is still negotiating). Expect the announcement today, and a launch of the new music property in July or August 2008. The news was first reported by… → Read More
For those of you who thought OpenSocial was going to make things easy for developers who want to create social networking apps once and deploy them everywhere, think again. More splintering is occurring. Tonight, rising music social network imeem (an original member of OpenSocial) is releasing its own software development kit for programmers to create applications on imeem. Imeem is not abandoning… → Read More
In the global race to be the top social network, MySpace and Facebook are neck and neck. In January, 2008, MySpace was still the biggest social network worldwide with 109 million unique visitors, according to comScore. But Facebook was close on its heels with 101 million. (Meanwhile, the data in the U.S. for Facebook at least shows a possible slowdown in growth). While MySpace and Facebook are… → Read More
Digital music wholesaler Snocap, long searching for a buyer, is being acquired by music streaming site Imeem. The price will likely not be disclosed. Snocap was founded in 2002 by Napster creator Shawn Fanning, Jordan Mendelson and Ron Conway. The company raised $10 million from Conway, Morgenthaler Ventures and WaldenVC and did high profile distibution deals with MySpace and others, but the… → Read More
After less than a year in operation, the team at Anywhere.FM reached an early payday today when veteran social music service Imeem gobbled them up for an undisclosed sum, most likely in a cash and stock mix. The iTunes-style web music player had raised under $100,000 in financing from Y Combinator and angels, making an early exit likely below $5 million possible. Anywhere.FM with its 60,000 users… → Read More
SpiralFrog has just announced the site is up to over 1 million uniques each month and expected to end this month with over 1.2 million uniques. SpiralFrog, for those of you who don’t remember, is the free (as in ad supported, not P2P) legal music service that unlocks over 1 million songs to their users as long as they log back in to their site at least once every month (an easy task if you… → Read More
In another move to strengthen the anti-YouTube coalition, Viacom is syndicating its videos (from Comedy Central, MTV Networks, Nickelodeon, and Atom Films, among other properties) to a whole new slew of video-sharing Websites. The new recipients of Viacom’s video love are Dailymotion, Veoh (which already has Hulu and CBS videos), imeem, GoFish, and MeeVee. They join AOL, Bebo, Joost, MSN… → Read More
Ad-supported music just won another convert. Music-sharing social network imeem struck a deal with EMI Music so that starting today its members can legally stream songs from Radiohead, Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Interpol, Daft Punk, the Beastie Boys, and every other EMI artist. EMI joins Warner Music and Sony-BMG as the third major label to strike a deal with imeem. That only… → Read More
Did you know that Imeem is the fastest-growing social site in the U.S (up 1,590 percent in monthly uniques). And that AIM Pages is growing slightly faster than Digg (345 percent growth versus 323 percent)? Well, at least according to comScore. I asked comScore to do a ranking of social sites in the U.S. and then I reordered the list by growth rate. Here it is: Here are my takeaways. MySpace is… → Read More
I find it ironic when the big, bad, tough guy music labels go after small-fry music sharing sites like imeem and then they jump into bed with them a couple months later. But it’s a smart move for both parties. Warner Music Group will now share in imeem’s ad revenue while imeem can stream WMG’s entire catalog along with videos to its user base. If you’re one of the 16 million users then you… → Read More
Social network Imeem and Snocap have officially launched their previously announced partnership to prevent copyright infringement and pay artists for the songs that people upload and stream to themselves and others. The pair and over 5,000 independent labels, like Nettwerk and Orchard, will pay artists on Imeem a share of the advertising revenue generated from ads that run along with the music. → Read More
Imeem is a tough startup. They languished in obscurity in 2005 and much of 2006 by pushing an instant-messaging centric model that required a download to access a full feature set. Late in 2006 they de-emphasized their client download and started focusing on a widget strategy, letting users upload any music and stream it to others via a widget. They adapted to the marketplace, and users responded… → Read More
MySpace has been acting a bit odd all year. Last month all Flash embeds on the site were turned off for a few hours. Some people speculated that they were testing the waters, seeing what kind of backlash they would see from user complaints. MySpace PR flatly denied these speculations, however, saying it was nothing more than a bug. Still, some sites are seeing what look to be permanent bans from… → Read More
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