Easily my favorite app on the Android platform is Imeem. It’s simple, fast and powerful, allowing you to listen to a huge range of music for free. And now it’s coming to the iPhone, we’ve learned.
The Imeem app has already been submitted for App Store approval and could be released any day, we’re hearing from a reliable source. In terms of what it will offer, you can probably expect it to be about the same as the Android version. That means access to Imeem’s library of music and perhaps more importantly, access to your own collection of songs from the cloud, if you use Imeem’s upload service to put your music on their servers.
Of course, you have to pay for that. But if you’re willing to shell out $99 a year for their most premium plan, it means you can access 20,000 of your songs from your iPhone from anywhere (there are lower-cost version with less storage as well).That’s around 80GB of music, obviously a lot more than an iPhone or iPod touch can hold. But one tricky thing about this on the iPhone is its close ties with iTunes, which means that many of its users probably have some DRM-protected music, which won’t work over Imeem’s streaming service. But I assume the new iTunes Plus, DRM-free variety (which the entire iTunes store was recently converted to) will.
And I’m sure you’ll be able to buy new music you hear on the Imeem app with one click that takes you to the iTunes store on the iPhone. This has been working out pretty well for Pandora.
Cloud-based streaming of music makes a lot of sense. It gives you a single place to access your music from anywhere, without taking up valuable space on your devices. Lala is another service doing this with a still unreleased iPhone app that we got an early look at. It makes so much sense, in fact, that I suspect Apple will eventually get into this game as well. It almost has to with HD movies and television shows at some point because most people simply do not have enough storage space even on home systems to buy that content to their heart’s content — which of course, Apple would love. Naturally, Apple would want to have an option to pull your music off of the cloud to take on trips where you don’t have web access as well — that’s something that won’t work so easily with Imeem’s solution.
Imeem’s iPhone application will undoubtedly have another major downside that the Android version does not: The inability to run in the background. That’s one of the killer features of the Android version — I can turn it on and leave it on while I do something else. Compare this to Pandora on the iPhone which shuts off as soon as you exit it. Seeing as Apple doesn’t allow third-party apps to run in the background, that will be the case with Imeem too.
Still, given the range of music Imeem offers and this cloud-based option, I’m definitely looking forward to this iPhone app. The Android version actually won the Crunchie this year for Best Mobile Application — even beating out Pandora for the iPhone. Look for the iPhone version soon in the App Store.
Since I’m a big CLOUD evangelist, this sounds like a great use of the cloud. Thanks for bringing them to my attention.
Thanks for this post. The cloud is the wave of the future as we increase bandwidth, and multi-media usage on our mobile devices.
t ~pooptheworld.com
Why would you buy a premium plan if you can use the free one?
cause the free one is very limited. 100 songs i believe.
Lets see what Michael Robertson thinks about all of this…
As cloud computing become more of a norm, competition will increase. Kevin good point, Free is the new business model. So the paid version folks may want to go back to the drawing boards with this.
They could make great $$$$ on advertising and keep their services FREE.
Twitter is down ! Resorting to the list!
http://www.tech...e-things-to-do/
yes, thank you
Out of patience… mightbe we could use TC comment area as the tweet space, here:
Thanks
Or you can just use SimplifyMedia, already available and totally free
I’ve been using the FREE SimplifyMedia for a while now. It works great.
test
MG, when do TC50 tickets go on sale?
yep as mentioned, why store anything in the cloud when you can just use simplifymedia to stream your ENTIRE itunes catalog to your iPhone?
Uh, yeah–Simplify is 2.99 and amazing. Do you guys do any research there? Soundcloud–bah!
Imeems uploading for serious number of tunes sucks.
I do like Simplify Media’s cost (one time) and its new player on the iPhone. But Simplify Media needs my laptop to be on which is usually not the case when I am listening on my iPhone. So it just doesn’t work for me.
I currently use Zumodrive and pay $7/month for 25GB. This is enough for my music and I can use it for other stuff. SugarSync is another player in this space. But Zumo does a much better job with music.
its already online, right? http://www.imee.../mobile/iphone/
i thought imeem was going out of business
My next favorite app!
Why would you buy a premium plan if you can use the free one?