imeem announced today that we’re joining with Google to make it even easier to hear and buy the music you search for online.

Starting this afternoon, when you search for a song or an artist on Google, you will be presented with deep links directly to the pages on imeem from which you can sample songs, buy downloads and explore more music.

For nearly four years, imeem has worked hard to realize our vision of letting fans stream any song, at any time, with the costs supported by advertising.

This vision is driven by our belief that the key to stemming piracy is making it easier to find music than it is to steal it. As recent research has shown, people will do the right thing when the right thing is also the easiest to do.

Search already plays an integral role in our business, not only in how people get to imeem but in how they find music to play once they’re here. By integrating imeem links directly into search results, Google and imeem are making music discovery even more convenient — in a way that does right by fans and artists.

We believe this partnership will bring more people to imeem and introduce a much wider audience to legal music services that make it easy –and fun—to discover music.

We’re proud to be working with Google during such an exciting time for music.

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

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

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

Today, we finally have an answer: Our app just launched, and you can install it for free from iTunes.

imeem Mobile for iPhone, which is available now as a free download through Apple’s App Store, has the same features as the popular Android app we launched last fall. With imeem Mobile, you can:
•  Create stations with music from your favorite artists;
•  Listen to featured stations programmed by the imeem team and our partners (like this one of songs featured in Apple ads)
•  Buy songs from the iTunes Store with one-click and download them to your iPhone
•  Share songs with friends via email

It also includes MyMusic, a feature that enables people who have uploaded their personal music libraries to imeem.com to stream that music through their iPhone or iPod touch. We think it’s a cool way to access the music you love anywhere you want, without having to sacrifice space on your iPhone.

Our team has been working for months on this new version of imeem Mobile. We’re excited to (finally) be making it available to the millions of people who own iPhones and iPod touches. And we’re excited to hear what you think.

Hope you enjoy the music.

imeem Mobile now includes a tab called MyMusic that lets you access and stream music you’ve uploaded to imeem on your phone. When you upload the music you own to imeem, you can listen to it on the T-Mobile G1 without taking up any storage on the device.

Since we released imeem Mobile on the Android platform last October, we’ve been inspired by the positive feedback from our community, from industry folks and from our brand partners. MyMusic has been our mobile community’s number one request, and we’re excited to be able to deliver it today.

Our team has also been working hard at creating new imeem Mobile features that make it more convenient for you to share and enjoy your favorite music on the mobile device, including:

“Favorite” Stations: Program your own radio station by automatically creating “Favorite Artist” and “Favorite Song” stations with music comprised of the artists and songs you designate as favorites.

Share with a friend: You can now share your favorite songs with friends via email. Similar to imeem.com, friends receive an email with a link to the full-length song on imeem.com.

One last thing- we’ve been getting lots of questions about extending imeem Mobile to other platforms like the iPhone. Our team has been working on some new things on the mobile front, so stay tuned!

Millions of people are using Twitter (www.twitter.com) every day to keep their friends updated on what they’re doing. Now, imeem has added social music to Twitter to let your friends know what’s on your playlist. Friends are often the most trusted source of music recommendations- we hope this new feature will make it easier for you to discover and share music with your friends and followers.

imeem’s Twitter widget automatically lets your friends know what songs you’re listening to and what playlists you’re creating when you’re surfing imeem. It will send out a tweet with a link to that imeem song or playlist so your friends can start listening in one click.

How to add the Twitter integration: If you already have a Twitter account, go to your dashboard (http://www.imeem.com/home/) and add the Twitter widget. You can find the Twitter widget on this page: http://www.imeem.com/dashboard/add/

We twitter at imeem! To start following updates from imeem on Twitter, you can add us here: http://twitter.com/imeem

You can also join the Twitter group on imeem and talk to other imeem users who tweet: http://www.imeem.com/twitter

We’re honored to announce that imeem Mobile won the award for “Best Mobile App” at the 2008 Crunchies awards.

Over the past few weeks, thousands of you voted for imeem, and I’d like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank all of you for your support. With your help, imeem Mobile has been officially recognized as one of the best technology innovations of 2008.

I’d also like to thank the imeem team members who developed the slick application. I’m continually impressed by the creativity and dedication of our team working here at imeem.

We’re excited that imeem’s first mobile application has been so well received since we launched it last October. Today, imeem Mobile is the number one streaming music application in the Android Market and is one of the 10 most downloaded apps overall.

In 2009, we plan to continue adding more features and make imeem Mobile available on other mobile platforms.

Thanks for helping us kick off 2009 with a bang.

We’ve reorganized the front door of the site, changed the navigation menu you see at the top of every page, and created entirely new and fun features for you. Why? We wanted to organize all the social activity happening on imeem to surface the most relevant music, video and entertainment for you. Here is a rundown of the new and improved imeem:

Spotlight: The new Spotlight page features the latest exciting music, videos and entertainment people are posting on imeem and that we think you should know about. We’ll refresh this page frequently to let you know what’s hot on imeem today, such as exclusive new music, popular videos, and celebrity playlists from your favorite artists. Click here to see Spotlight.

Discover: imeem created the all new Discover page to give you personalized recommendations of music, videos, artists and people we think you might like based upon your listening and viewing habits and those of the people you are connected to in the imeem community. By constantly analyzing your likes, dislikes, and who your friends and favorite artists are, we’re able to give you a unique set of recommended music, video, playlists, artists and events. One of the cool things about this new section is that the more you use imeem, the better it gets. Click here to see Discover.

Browse: The Browse page offers chart-based browsing of any media content (think music, videos, photos and more) based on its popularity site-wide. You can now filter by content type, genre, and popularity in the imeem community. Surfing the vast amount of playlists, music, video, and photos posted by users has never been easier. Click here to see Browse.

Artist Pages: You can now search to find new Artist Pages, which pull everything posted by the community related to that artist into one page on the site. Now you’ll have easy access to the complete catalog of content created by the artist and can see who else is a fan on imeem. Like Lil’ Wayne or Radiohead? Check out their Artist Page that features tour dates, all time most popular songs and videos, playlists of all their albums and more. Click here for Lil’ Wayne and here for Radiohead.

You still have all the features you had before, including the ability to upload and stream unlimited music and videos for free and make playlists that you can share anywhere across the Web. We hope the new changes will help you connect and discover new music, artists, and videos, find new friends with common tastes in music and socialize around the things you’re passionate about.

Today is just one of many steps in the growth of imeem. We’ll continue to create new features and improve things across our service. Thank you for being a part of the imeem community and giving us your feedback. We’ll have some new developments to share with you in the near future. Stay tuned!

Sony BMG has the second largest music collection in the world and represents some of the imeem community’s most popular artists, including, Justin Timberlake, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Chris Brown, John Legend, Modest Mouse, Beyonce, Sean Kingston and more. This is the real deal.

I know there are a lot of people out there complaining about 30-second samples like it’s some kind of conspiracy to make the site lame. That’s actually the opposite of the truth. To allow all of you to post and stream music, we have to get permission from the artists and record labels that worked hard to create and develop the music (and most importantly own the music). We are out there every day hustling to turn on as much content as we can. We know that full songs make the site more fun to use. Show us some support for going out there and trying to build a business and do the right thing by artists, labels and ourselves. Seriously, we want full song streams as bad as you do!

We are going to keep getting deals done, so check out some of the fantastic music we turned on, build some new playlists, and keep the faith.