imeem – Music is Social

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.

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

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.

If there’s one thing we love above all else at imeem, it’s music playlists. Not only do we obsessively make our own for every occasion, we love discovering new music on other people’s carefully handcrafted playlists.

That being said, what better way to end 2008 than with a Year End Playlist Extravaganza! imeem has created a single page where millions of fans can come together to enjoy and celebrate the best new songs and artists of 2008 at http://www.imeem.com/extravaganza.

To get started, we reached out far and wide to gather 2008 playlists from a cross-section of musicians, celebrities, blogs and magazines. Check out top picks from everyone from Jason Mraz, T-Pain and Jazmine Sullivan to The Onion AV Club, Playboy and Dale Earnhardt Jr. You can also find out what the imeem community was listening to this year. Explore playlists featuring the most popular songs of the year on imeem plus a breakdown of top 10 songs by city. Ever wonder what imeem users in LA listen to compared to fans in New York? Find out on the Extravaganza.

Once you find a favorite playlist, you can embed it on your social networking profiles on MySpace or Facebook, Twitter it, blog it and email it to your friends to help them discover new music.

Most importantly, we want to hear about your favorite songs from 2008. What was on your playlist in 2008? You hope you join the Extravaganza group and add your playlist to share with everyone else.

Happy holidays from imeem!

imeem has great news for our music fans. Britney Spears premiered her new album, “Circus,” exclusively on her profile today at http://www.imeem.com/britneyspears a week before the official album launch on December 2. You can listen to it for free, share it with your friends and embed it anywhere on the Web, including your blog, Facebook and MySpace profile.

Britney Spears is the latest high profile artist to premiere her music on imeem. Her album debut comes days after platinum-selling artist Lil Wayne premiered his latest mixtape, “Dedication 3.” Other artists we have premiered exclusive music and videos this year include T-Pain, Fall Out Boy, Nelly, U2, Bloc Party, The Rolling Stones, Linkin Park, Q-Tip and Scarlett Johansson, among many others. We’ll be working hard to bring more of these exclusives to the imeem community. Enjoy!

Listen to “Circus” Here

Music is life. The songs and artists that we listen to both define us and are defined by us. Since we’re music fans and playlist maniacs here at imeem, we think the same holds true for our presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain.

So what did we do? We scoured the Interwebs to research each candidate’s music taste. After finding interviews and articles from venerable magazines like Rolling Stone and Blender, we pieced together Obama and McCain’s top 10 favorite songs as told by the candidates themselves!

What can you do with my favorite prez candidate’s playlist? We thought it would be fun to put each candidate’s list of top 10 songs into an imeem playlist that you can not only listen to it as much as you want, but also share the playlist with friends in the imeem community and post it as a playlist widget in your favorite social network such as facebook, myspace, friendster, or Hi5. You can blog it. You can twitter it. Play it loud so people can hear it outside your window on the street.

So let everyone know if you think Obama or McCain has the best playlist as the election draws near, and help decide which candidate will rock the nation…

Click here to listen to Barack Obama’s Playlist

Click here to listen to John McCain’s Playlist

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!

imeem is exclusively streaming deluxe editions of U2’s first three albums, Boy (1980), October (1981) and War (1983) starting today. The albums include a wealth of b-sides, live tracks and rarities plus video excerpts of live TV performances by the band from the early ‘80s. imeem is the only place you can check out the albums prior to their North American release on July 22, 2008.

It gives you an inside look into the evolution of the band and shaping of what would become the U2 sound. All three albums were produced by Steve Lillywhite who is actually back in the studio with U2 at work on their next album. Can’t wait.

http://www.imeem.com/u2music

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!