imeem – Music is Social

Over the past several months, the imeem team has been working to redesign our website to make it easier for you to discover and enjoy new music on imeem. We’ve been paying close attention to the activity on the site and listening to your feedback, and we’re excited to share the new site changes with you today.

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!

We are extremely excited to announce that we have partnered with Sony BMG to provide FULL LENGTH streaming music and video on imeem starting today in North America.

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.

Hello imeem,

Happy new year. I have some great news to share. We recently announced an agreement with Universal Music Group, which is the world’s largest music company. Under the agreement, imeem users get to upload, stream and share music and video from Univeral’s catalogue for free through imeem.

What does this mean for you? It means that when you’re on imeem, you can check out full-length songs and videos from more of the artists you care about – people like Kanye West, The Killers, Snow Patrol, Wu-Tang Clan, Gwen Stefani, Amy Winehouse, Fall Out Boy, 50 Cent, and Black Eyed Peas. When you find something you like, you can playlist it, tag it, rate it, comment on it, and discover music you might like by finding other imeem users who are into the same things you are.

We also recently secured a similar deal with EMI Music. Some of the artists on EMI include Radiohead, Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, 30 Seconds to Mars, Norah Jones, Interpol, KT Tunstall, Daft Punk, Joss Stone, the Beastie Boys.

This means that imeem now has deals done with all 4 major music labels in the U.S., as well as a number of independent labels and video providers. This took a lot of blood, sweat and tears (and the better part of the last 18 months) to accomplish, but it’s been worth it. It’s great to know we’re continuing to make big strides in giving imeem users the full-length streaming you’ve been demanding, and doing so in a way that ensure that artists get paid, too, thanks to the advertising on our site.

We at imeem are proud to be offering a cool site that offers all the music and video you love, while working hand-in-hand with labels and artists. Now that all of this is done, we truly have the largest, most vibrant and interactive playlist community on the Internet.

Thanks for sticking with us, and if you know people that haven’t been on imeem in a few months, make a playlist for them and let them know that as of now we have the largest legal full-song streaming site on the Internet.

Dalton

P.S.
At the moment most of our deals are for allowing full-song streams to imeem members in the U.S. and Canada. International users shouldn’t worry, we are working hard on securing the same rights for our members in other countries.

We are proud to present the new Theme Editor! This fine piece of work allows you to edit your profile and/or group page with a wide array of options that you can tweak and preview instantly. We have included various wallpapers, section headers, and colors to maximize your styling options and make your page look and feel like home.

Wanna roll the dice? Check out the “Feeling Lucky” tab to access our imeem Random Theme Generator! You can also choose one of our awesome preset themes (located in the Theme Library) which will give your page a stylish flow. All of the themes in the Theme Library are completely editable, so if there’s something you don’t like about one, you can make the changes you want. Simple as that!

Also, be sure to join the official imeem Themes group, where you can chat and discuss the Theme Editor and your experience with other imeemers.

We hope you enjoy this exciting new feature. Stay tuned though, as we plan on launching more stuff soon (including more themes, user-submitted themes, and a personal theme library).

To edit your profile theme:
1) Click on “Home” in the top navbar
2) Click on “Edit Profile”
3) Click on “Edit Profile Theme”

To edit a group theme:
1) Go to a group page that you have created
2) Click on “Edit this group’s options”
3) Click the “Theme” tab

So what are you waiting for?
Start pimping out your page!

I am incredibly happy to report that we have reached a deal with Warner Music Group that allows us to stream the full length versions of Warner music and video to imeem members in the United States. Their content is available on the site right now.

Some of the hundreds of artists now available include:

T.I.
Diddy
Notorious BIG
Madonna
Death Cab For Cutie
The Doors
The White Stripes
Muse
Flaming Lips
R.E.M.
Bjork
Smashing Pumpkins

Today, we’re introducing our very own imeem Facebook appication that allows you to add to your Facebook profile any music playlist, song, or video that’s available on imeem. If you already have a Facebook account, you can go ahead and add this new app by clicking here.

Want to put some crazy dance videos, your latest party mix, or some summer jams on your Facebook page? No problem. Once you’ve added the imeem app, there are a variety of ways to add content to your Facebook profile:

[if you're surfing imeem]
* On any music playlist, song, or video page on imeem, click the Facebook icon under the “Add To My” section. Then click the link “Add To Facebook Profile”
* Copy and paste the URL of any music playlist, song, or video into the imeem Facebook app

[if you're using the imeem Facebook app]
* Check out our listing of featured and top ranked content and easily add any of that media to your page
* View what imeem content your friends have added, and add that stuff to your own page (you can claim that you added it first)

As always, suggestions and comments are welcome (just add them as a comment to this blogpost). We’re still trying to figure out what other neat stuff we can do with this Facebook app, so stay tuned for further updates.

Here’s the link: http://apps.facebook.com/imeemfb/ . Tell your friends to add it as well! And if you’re having trouble figuring out what content to add to your Facebook profile, here are some suggestions to get you started!

…Angelo
…Playlist: Dim Mak Records Sampler [ Add ]

…Rosa
…Video: Paris in Jail – Music Video Parody [ Add ]

…Joe
…Song: Silversun Pickups – Lazy Eye [ Add ]

…jimmylin
…Playlist: the eclectic collection (sorry, gotta pimp out my own playlist) [ Add ]

…Brian
…Song: Apples in Stereo – Energy [ Add ]

…Gina
…Video: The Strokes – You Only Live Once [ Add ]

[On a side note, isn't it crazy how many new apps are popping up every day? Some are addictive (I could spend hours drawing masterpieces with the Graffiti app), some are a little odd ("Your friend has thrown a sheep at you"...huh?!?!), and some are random (anyone else get a message saying someone rated them on the Lamefactor scale?). Go figure.]

Just like with music, now it’s easy to upload all your video collection in one swift blow by following these easy steps:

1. Browse and select the videos you want to upload.
2. Add some basic information about each video. (the minimum required is a genre).
3. Upload.
4. Get some popcorn and revisit all those awesome moments. Like the monkey scratching it’s butt, the star wars kid or the night you were interviewed drunk.

You can join the fun here: http://upload.imeem.com/videoupload/
(Click on the text that reads: “Uploading a lot of files? Click here.”)

Are you a prolific artist with a gazillion music files that you want to upload to your imeem profile/group but you don’t want to go through the cumbersome process of uploading one file at a time?

Try the new multiple file uploader!
1. Browse
2. Select your songs.
3. Upload All of them at once!

And remember, only upload songs for which you own the rights to!

You can find it in the Upload section of the site (when you select “Music”). And then click on the text that reads: “Uploading a lot of files? Click here”

http://upload.imeem.com/audioupload/

Enjoy!

Hey people,

We’re really excited to tell you about our updated “What’s New” feature. It lets you see all the cool stuff that your friends have been sharing and commenting on as well as things happening in your groups.

You can see your “What’s New” by clicking here. You can also get to it by clicking the “View All” link in the “What’s New” section of your home page.

The “What’s New” feature really speaks for itself but here are some of it’s key components:
- View by playlists, music, videos, etc.
- Watch new videos directly on the page
- View all recent forum activity in one click

So check it out and let us know what you think.