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December 9, 2007

Imeem Pens a Deal with Universal Music. Now Has All the Majors.

Erick Schonfeld

20 comments »

imeem-logo.pngAd-supported music streaming is now officially legit. Music social network imeem has inked a deal with the fourth and final major label, Universal Music Group, to make its entire digital catalog available for free to imeem members. Music from EMI, Warner Music, and Sony-BMG is already available on the site. Now members can start streaming songs from Kanye West, 50 Cent, Black Eyed Peas, The Killers, Snow Patrol, Maroon 5 and Nelly.

This makes imeem the first social network to have a complete library of full-length music streams from all four labels. (All together, including music from independent labels, imeem members can now listen to 5 million songs—nearly as many as the 6 million available on iTunes, but for free). Cut the labels in on your advertising revenues, and they will play ball. At least, until something better comes along.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, December 9th, 2007 at 9:01 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Angela Hayden

    December 9th, 2007 at 9:40 pm

    way cool

  2. Everyone Loves Free Music

    December 9th, 2007 at 9:42 pm

    word on the street is that imeem is paying at least 3 of the major labels a floor of a penny per stream. so they could care less if imeem actually sells any ads…

  3. Joe Duck

    December 9th, 2007 at 9:53 pm

    The big experiment can now begin - ad supported vs pay to play. Not clear to me how this will shake out but I’m guessing that ad supported is going to be hard to manage, and weak in revenues.

  4. My Way

    December 9th, 2007 at 10:37 pm

    it’s about time already. music is already free on p2p sharing and there’s a lot of free stuff on older social networking websites. let people do what they want on sites like imeem myspace and facebook for free and get money from the online ads like the rest of the web content indsutry does.

  5. Evan

    December 9th, 2007 at 11:10 pm

    “Now members can start streaming songs from Kanye West, 50 Cent, Black Eyed Peas, The Killers, Snow Patrol, Maroon 5 and Nelly.”

    Nelly? Really? Just threw that in there? Ha! Seems so out of place.

  6. Ryan Spahn

    December 9th, 2007 at 11:29 pm

    Can i get this through my windows mobile, iphone or upcoming android phone?

    Serve me geographical ads based on my IP and interests as it streams. THere’s got to be tons of money to be made this way!

  7. FreshBreakfast

    December 10th, 2007 at 12:12 am

    Why the dismissive parting shot at the end there, Erick?

    I agree with your first sentence, though. I think this is a MONUMENTAL deal. With this big of a mainstream catalogue, imeem is the new downloading. Meaning, it’s now actually easier and more convenient to stream music though imeem, rather than DLing songs. And it’s legal!

    Ironically, this deal has the potential to make illegally downloading music the new “buying” am album. That is, you only download the music you know and love, that make it worth the trouble.

    For serious music junkies, this is huge.

  8. Rajeev

    December 10th, 2007 at 12:12 am

    Let me checkout.

    http://tekno-world.blogspot.com

  9. David

    December 10th, 2007 at 12:45 am

    I’d heard a similar rumor about the penny-per-hour minimum — i.e. basically the same floor as the on-demand subscription services (Rhapsody, Napster) pay.

    If this were true, imeem would need to sell 100% of its ads at a net CPM (after commissions) of $10, with a new ad displayed for each and every song, just to cover its obligation to the labels (and ignoring composition royalties, bandwidth, contribution to overhead and profit).

  10. Gabe

    December 10th, 2007 at 3:52 am

    So the free quasi-infinite jukebox was born today. Wow. Hope it survives.

  11. Steve Ballmer

    December 10th, 2007 at 6:39 am

    Balm is on Virb.

    virb.com/balm/

  12. Mitch Reisendorf

    December 10th, 2007 at 8:11 am

    And how much of this will actually reach the pockets of the artists themselves? ZERO. This is just the majors grabbing whatever they can but should in no way be looked at as some sort of long term solution. Lets see how long Imeem can hold up to the major label crunch on their ad money profit

  13. mathew johnson

    December 10th, 2007 at 8:13 am

    i wonder who cares the most if i minimize an imeem window and just listen to the music without seeing/clicking any ads?

    ultimately hard to stay away from in-stream audio ads.

  14. david hyman

    December 10th, 2007 at 3:56 pm

    when they get the rates down to 1/10th of a penny, sites that in are the business of turning a profit could do this too!! let’s see how long it takes for the rates to get there. anyone want to make a prediction? i say 24 months. i hope i’m wrong!!!

  15. george mcfly

    December 11th, 2007 at 5:13 pm

    It’s really funny to read comments for people that have no idea what they are talking about. Where did you “hear” what imeem is paying labels? From an imeem employee? investor? probably not. just another internet nerd running off at the keyboard about things they “think” they know about, and wish they were apart of. suckers.

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