Posts Tagged ‘imeem’

SoundTracking, a new, mobile music app, has recently announced the achievement of a business landmark by exceeding 100,000 downloads since its release only two weeks ago.

SoundTracking follows in the same vein of many recent social music applications, providing users with an appropriate tool for sharing — or bragging — about whatever they’re currently listening to (“Have you heard of whale-core yet? No? It’s trash metal and throat singing with distorted whale song instead of guitars!”) via their mobile status. The app is able to identify music currently being played (through the use of GraceNote technology) at the user’s location or can have songs selected through a search function. SoundTracking then lets users share a sample of the song, its title, their current location and photos and comments on either the app itself or a host of supported, external social networks.

Read more

If you want to have a successful music startup, then you’d better be either very lucky, or have one crazy ace up your sleeve. Otherwise, you’re doomed to failure, according to Imeem founder Dalton Caldwell.

Onerous fees, antiquated licensing systems, money hungry labels, and market domination by Apple’s iTunes Store are some of the hurdles that a music startup needs to overcome, Caldwell told tech’s best and brightest at the YCombinator Startup School in Stanford on Sunday.

“Every time a founder does a music startup, a likely more successful startup dies,” said Caldwell, who’s own streaming music startup Imeem died on the vine in 2009.

Caldwell listed various online music business models and systematically picked them apart: Music download stores have iTunes’ 90% market share to deal with. Subscription music services have to pay expensive minimum fees to the labels and wade through licensing restrictions on a country-by-country basis. Not to mention existing competition from the likes of Napster and Rhapsody.

Music startups are often forced to sign non-transferable licensing deals, according to Caldwell, which means that if the music startup is sold, the buyer can’t use the license. A serious problem for startups hoping to attract a big money buyer.

Caldwell’s Imeem was once valued at $24 million, and managed to sign deals with all 4 major U.S. labels. However, the financial hurdles proved too much. MySpace bought the company for less than $1 million and promptly canned it.

We’ve seen other music startups fold as well. Music marketplace Amie Street was bought out and shut down by Amazon.com in September.

Music businesses based on the streaming radio model have the best chance of making it, according to Caldwell. Popular online radio startup Pandora, which is now profitable, was in a battle for its life against high online broadcasting fees just a couple of years ago. After hard negotiation and legal wrangling the company was able to get a royalty rate that allowed it to stay in business, however it was still higher than traditional broadcast fees. And following the Pandora model may already be out of reach for small startups, he added.

The struggles for online music startups will continue until governments work out some sort of international licensing framework, musicians abandon music labels, and the industry creates some sort of distribution and measurement system that tracks song popularity, said Caldwell. And that’s not going to happen any time soon.

For Imeem users who have had no access their playlists on the new MySpace website, recent news will bring music to their ears – literally. Users can now reacquire their playlists through MySpace Music. TechCrunch recently reported and confirmed that playlists are able to be imported.
Read more

PaidContent is reporting that imeem is laying off 25 percent of their staff as the economic woes begin to manifest. There’s no word about why they are laying off so many but I can only assume it’s related to the presentations provided by Sequoia VCs a couple weeks ago about how cutting staff early is how to survive through the economic downturn. Those that try to wade through the storm could get crushed.

Not only is the company laying off 25 percent of their staff but PaidContent is also reporting that the company has hired a bank and is trying to sell itself for at least $200 million since that was their latest valuation. The company is one of the largest social networks but according to Compete.com, domestic traffic has decreased around 20 percent since June, 13 percent alone in the last month.

Many have suggested that most social networks will be forced to shut down or get rolled up into other media companies as the top one or two become the dominant players. I think we are beginning to see this happen as Facebook spreads globally. Facebook continues to grow at an impressive rate. No other social network has ever reached as many people as they now have registered: more than 110 million.

It’s most definitely unfortunate for the imeem company as they have faced increasing competition from large social networks with the launch of MySpace music and Facebook’s rumored entry. It will be interesting to see how this story plays out in the next few months.

It looks like the Android press releases are rolling out tonight. The second social network to announce support for Android this evening is imeem. The application provides many of the features currently available on the imeem website. Users can browse through music and create their own custom radio stations. What’s not clear is whether or not users can listen to the full songs.

The application integrates directly with the on-site experience, making the music that people listen to on the go, influence applications on the site. While Pandora has not launched a similar version of their application on Android yet, any launch by them would most definitely be seen as competition. Pandora has been highly successful on the iPhone, providing users with full-song streaming capabilities.

This is the first music service that I have seen launch on the Android Market. Unfortunately the first Google phone that will be launching on T-Mobile has yet to be released so we have no way of testing out the Android applications. The current implementation of imeem for Android appears to be extremely simple, focused entirely on user playlists rather than full social networking functionality (messaging, profiles, etc).

The social network battle for dominance on mobile devices is in full swing and there’s no doubt that this trend will continue for the next few months as carriers decide what platforms to use for their own applications. It will be interesting to see how this battle plays out, but it’s definitely exciting to see another large social network enter the mobile space.

For those who are not aware, Imeem is another big social network aside from the big two MySpace and Facebook. It’s in the line of Tagged, Orkut and Bebo. Sadly we don’t really get to hear some buzz about them or anything coming from them. Until now, as Imeem joined the likes of Facebook, Friendfeed and the other big sites which have gone a redesign of their sites. As a bonus, Imeem has even introduced several new features to its site namely, Spotlight, Discover, Browse and Artist Page. Read more