What good is an endless jukebox in the sky if you can only listen to it while you are sitting in front of your computer? Imeem answers that with what is certainly the best Android app I’ve seen (or heard) so far. It’s called imeem Mobile, and it is the musically-oriented social network’s first foray into the mobile arena.
Caveat: I’ve had a review phone for about a week, and only now are a bunch of new apps flooding onto the Android market in anticipation of T-Mobile’s G1 going on sale on Wednesday. So this is an early favorite that could be eclipsed by better apps down the road. But, just to compare, MySpace is also launching a mobile app for Android tonight, and that doesn’t even include any streaming music.
Imeem is one of the few music Websites with streaming licenses from all four major music labels, plus most of the independents. (MySpace Music is another). Imeem offers its music streams for free, supported by advertising and affiliate fees from music downloads. With imeem Mobile, the most popular songs from its catalog are available for streaming on the Android phone. Says CEO Dalton Caldwell:
We look at what the most popular songs are across imeem, and in real time populate them to be available on mobile. The catalog is a literal representation of what the community finds most interesting at different times. So the songs available change daily as tastes change.
You can search for specific artists (I had no trouble finding songs from a wide spectrum of artists including David Bowie, the Beastie Boys, Vampire Weekend, and Serge Gainsbourg, for instance). Or you can just pick one artist and let imeem create a playlist of related songs that it streams radio-style.
Each song can be favorited, blocked, paused, or bought on Amazon’s MP3 store (which downloads the MP3 straight to the phone’s music library). You can also skip to the next song. The recommendation engine works without a hitch if you start out with the right artist. I’m listening to it right now, and it is just as good as Pandora, which is saying a lot. The streaming quality over Wifi sounds just as good as my iPod (the 3G in my apartment is more spotty).
The app creates a station around each of your favorite artists, keeps a history of recent artists you’ve listened to, and lets you create a station based on your favorites and related artists. It also offers a Top 100 station base don the most popular songs on imeem, a Spotlight station where imeem promotes new acts, and a Discover station based purely on imeem’s personalized recommendations.
Every song you listen to or add as a favorite on imeem Mobile is reflected in your media tracker on the Website proper, and vice versa. So as you listen to songs while at your desktop, every artist you mark as a favorite will be available to you when you walk out the door with your Android phone.
The most glaring omission from the mobile app is that you cannot access your playlists from the site. Caldwell tells me:
We didn’t get the feature that enables access to your playlists on the phone into the final shipping build for this launch, but it is obviously something the imeem mobile app should do.
It should also give you access to your friend’s playlists and the option of building stations around their favorites. And the search feature could be improved. All in good time. But imeem Mobile is a clear example of how software that taps into the vast resources of the Web (in this case, a virtually limitless music database and the smarts that come from watching social interactions on a grand scale) can turn an Android phone into a real game-changer. Instead of 10,000 songs in your pocket, now you can have one million.
That’s awesome. I love imeem so good for them. now they just gotta come out with that same app for the iphone…
Peter
http://www.thewebwar.com
I agree, Imeem is awesome. They’ve come a long way from being a peer-to-peer social network platform (downloadable app) at launch to a full-fledged online music provider. I too am waiting for an iPhone app.
“now they just gotta come out with that same app for the iphone…”
Don’t think Apple would allow an app competing with itunes…
What’s with the game changer comment at the end? Imeem sounds a lot like Pandora and Lastfm on the iPhone.
Anyone have experience with imeem, pandora, and lastfm? Thoughts on the differences between the three?
Hoping for a shortcut. Instead of going through the tedious process of trying out imeem, pandora & lastfm, is there anyone here who can give a brief comparison on all 3?
Thanks!:)
LastFM on the iPhone is very cool. Artist Radio / Tag Radio and playlists work.
While music is playing you gat band info and upcomming events.
The other 2, I don’t know.
Last.fm – create stations based upon artist name, video and concert recommendations, great for discovery and social aspect
Pandora – create a station off an artist or specific song, easiest to use but stations get stale if you vote too much – probably the best for just listening
CBS/AOL Radio Player – 300 pre-programmed stations you can fast-forward, very cool if you are into variety, but you cannot start from a specific song or artist or play music on demand
Imeem – more like a jukebox than internet radio, you choose what song to play one at a time from millions available – not that impressive in my book
With so many options, I would look to Yahoo and Google to develop a universal profile (http://blog.wir...-turning-m.html) with someone like Dash Media (http://www.dashmediausa.com) to hold your music tastes “in the cloud” and farm it out to the competing music services, so you can find great music options regardless of the service you choose.
Imeem didn’t work for me wih Firefox on Mac OS. Too bad.
Works just fine for me in Firefox & OSX.
Thank you imeem for a solid music app for Android. Song and artist search finally makes its glorious, legal entrance onto mobile devices.
Last.fm will without a doubt come soon too.
Commenting from an android whilst “bumping” some music from imeem.
Its a really cool app but only allows you to listen to 6 songs an hour >.<
I haven’t run into the 6-song limit. Maybe that is only 6 skips per hour. I’ve been listening all day.
Yup, it’s a limit on how many songs you can skip per station. Change stations and you can skip some more. Keep “bumping.”.
Commenting from a g1 whilst “bumping” music from imeem. Its a cool app but only allows for 6 songs to play an hour >.<
i’ve been addicted to imeem for awhile – another good move. all the best to dalton, steve n co.
Only six songs an hour? You had me till that point. Any chance of this changing in the future?
Yeah, they need to drop the six songs thing but otherwise a winner in a very tough market.
Ok, but when you walk out the door, you still need a connection, wi-fi or 3G, in order to be able to listen, so it’s not gonna hurt iPods. Unless that changes, people will still prefer downloads to streaming.
And btw, a lot of the songs on imeem (and last.fm too) are still 30 sec samples, not a full tracks as opposed to MySpace Music.
I’m still a fan of streaming, though. Let’s see what is about to come in this very tight market.
It works great over both Wifi and 3G. I’ve been using it on 3G all day. Even worked without skipping a beat in an elevator. Gotta love progresive downloads.
Seems the competition has shifted from making you buy records to making you consume free streaming music… cool.
I love imeem, and would love for it to be on the iPhone. It’s great for finding a song you might not have in your personal collection. However, is nothing that youtube on the iphone can’t do (except the playlist option is not available on the youtube app currently).
I love how these web apps are becoming extremely popular in the mobile market. We live in a exciting time!
Er, so this sounds exactly like the last.fm app on the iPhone yet it’s reported as though it was some kind of tremendous innovation and without any reference to that product. Is the author of this article the same person who wrote in a previous post that last.fm was significantly failing to compete with the likes of imeem? Then it was pointed out in the comments that the stats he’d used were only for the US and in fact last.fm had impressive global penetration that he’d ignored. Sloppy reporting like this can’t help but reflect on the site it’s published by. Oh and I’d urge anyone who owns an iPhone to try out last.fm, as it’s generally very impressive and does just what imeem claims without any song limit. (I’m not in any way affiliated with last.fm, just a happy user.)
I believe if you look at quantcast you’ll see that imeem worldwide is seen by 80million users and CBS (which includes last.fm) is only seen by 30million
So last.fm may be more popular than imeem in some territories, but overall global penetration pus imeem way ahead of last.fm, yes it may be sloppy reporting to only consider the US in making your case, but the fact remains that last.fm is a distant second to imeem in terms of user popularity.
Er, last.fm doesn’t have an Android app (yet). This is about Android, not the iPhone.
After writing my comment above, I thought I’d go and check and yes, it was Erick Schonfeld who wrote the other post: http://www.tech...ch-up-to-imeem/. Colour me underwhelmed by his reporting on this issue: the US is not the world.
We live in a exciting time! Web will succeed…
I like ads, only in this way, everything will be supplied free.
as an android developer, been playing with imeem app for a day.
songs load very quickly. Last.fm doesn’t down sample so their iphone app takes FOREVER to load between songs.
imeem, Pandora, AOL do a good job of this with their mobile apps and make listening, even on edge enjoyable
6 song an hour thing is not true.
the app complies with standard DMCA rules, so you can only “advance” or “skip” songs 6 times on one station an hour. Just change stations and it resets. This applies to all the streaming audio apps on either device. Same is true for Pandora’s website as well.
I wish it was a Slacker app instead. Their stations are the best.
People need a mobile app connects to a desktop app that plays music that they serve from their actual iTunes Music Folder on their computer. Served directly from your personal computer to your mobile.
when it come to my nokia 3110c multimedia mobile phone, which supports youtube streaming videos and international fm stations, plz confirm when it will release!