imeem – Music is Social

We’ve gotten a *lot* of feedback over the past 3 days about next week’s changes to user-uploaded photos and videos on imeem.

There has been some confusion about what is and isn’t changing, and I want to make clear that you will ALWAYS be able to post a profile picture, and to customize your profile theme. You will also still be able to post photos in comments by using standard embed code from sites like Photobucket.

We are listening, and wanted to give you an update on what we can do in response to your feedback.

First, we are delaying the removal of imeem’s photo storage features until Wednesday, July 15th. This will give imeem users extra time to transition those photos to other services.

Second, we’ve gotten questions about why we’re not offering a way for people to download and save the videos they have previously uploaded to imeem. The bottom line is that imeem was created as a place to upload and stream content; the site wasn’t built to support re-downloading of content (music or video), and making that change now isn’t practical for a variety of reasons. Our hope is that most users kept original copies of the videos they uploaded to the site. Our plan is still to remove all user-uploaded videos this Tuesday, June 30th.

This video change applies only to videos uploaded by users. We will continue to be a great place to go for official music videos, and in fact, it will be easier to search for and find music videos as a result of this change. You will still be able to express yourself by featuring these videos on your profile, alongside your favorite songs and playlists.

If you are an artist or label and would like to digitally deliver your video and make it available as part of our library of official ingested content, please contact us at partners@imeem.com.

Finally, we’ve heard from some VIP subscribers with concerns about the upcoming changes. We are offering refunds to those VIP subscribers who are directly affected by the changes; affected subscribers can send an email to VIP-support@imeem.com requesting a refund. Note: This email support address is for VIP subscribers only non-subscribers can email their feedback to our standard support address, support@imeem.com.

Thanks to everyone for your feedback.

Dalton

UPDATED: We are delaying the removal of imeem’s photo storage features until Wednesday, July 15th. This will give imeem users extra time to transition those photos to other services. Read more here.

I want to let people in the imeem community know about a few changes we’re making next week to simplify the site.

Starting next Tuesday, June 30th, we will no longer offer the imeem community the ability to access user-uploaded videos and photos. Any photos or videos that you have uploaded to your profile, or to groups you’re a member of, will be removed from imeem on the 30th. In preparation for next week’s changes, we’ve removed the option to upload photos or videos from our Web-based and desktop upload software.

We’re making these changes as part of an overall effort to simplify imeem so it’s cleaner and easier to navigate. This means enhancing imeem’s most popular social music features, and de-emphasizing some (like user-generated photos and videos) that are less popular, cost more to host & stream, or are of less interest to our advertisers. Simply put, there’s no ROI for us in UGV.

People come to imeem to enjoy music; we want to make it even easier for you to discover, buy & socialize around the music you love. Our recently revamped artist pages, which aggregate artists’ music and videos on a single page, and our new search page are just two examples of how we’re already refining the experience in direct response to feedback we’ve gotten from our community.

This doesn’t mean video is going away on imeem. You’ll still be able to watch thousands of music videos. And creating original video will continue to be a part of the services we offer for our advertisers.

One more thing: next week’s changes will not affect your profile pictures, or the MP3s you have uploaded to imeem – we will continue to give people the ability to upload and stream their music on imeem.

I realize that many of you may have questions about these changes. We’ve created a FAQ here to answer some of them, and have also set up a dedicated customer support forum where you can ask questions or share your concerns. We appreciate your support.

Dalton

I’m happy to let you know that our imeem Mobile app has just crossed an important milestone- it has now been installed more than one million times on iPhones, iPod touchs and Android handsets.

Since we launched imeem Mobile last October, hundreds of thousands of people in the imeem community have downloaded the free imeem Mobile app on their mobile devices. Your support has helped make imeem’s music application the most popular streaming music app on Android and one of the top 100 most popular apps in iTunes.

imeem Mobile has also been an important way to introduce our service to new people. About 1/3 of all people who install imeem Mobile are new to imeem (welcome, new imeemers!).

Since the launch of imeem Mobile, people have created more than 27 million artist stations on imeem Mobile. That’s almost 80 new stations created every minute- a true testament that people are enjoying and actively using the app.

In the coming months, we plan to add more features to make imeem Mobile more social and integrated with imeem.com. We hope you continue to enjoy the app and send us your feedback.

Having our cake and eating it too- imeem Mobile reaches 1 million installs

Here’s the imeem playlist from our a milli party. For the full playlist stream, go to http://bit.ly/FOiqB.

imeem a milli