What makes iTunes and Last.fm more viable in the long run is that neither is overrun by one genre or audience. Imeem is obviously urban/pop. As a user, it felt like there was nothing to discover, since it was the same stuff I’m already being spoon fed through other mediums.

This campaign to sell directly seems like a last-ditch effort by a failing platform. iTunes nailed the interface and continues to engage their user base, while Amazon is doing a reasonable job of leveraging their overall online dominance to join the music market.

To Imeem, I’d say your best shot is to promote artists more equally, and surprise your users. Make yourselves relevant. You have a unique opportunity to have people say “oh yeah, I discovered that artist on Imeem.” I don’t anyone saying that. Finally, your user flow for artists to link their music profile to the music that has been uploaded by fans is abysmal.

Ten percent is paltry compared to the 30% (or higher) markups on hardware.

Ten percent is paltry when you consider the amount of investment required to build such a platform and get all the record labels to cooperate.

Ten percent is paltry when you are a high-end brand like Apple.

The labels are more than willing to give away another $0.15 or so per download to imeem in an attempt to ween buyers away from itunes. Especialy the non-apple indoctrinated “urban” audience that dominates imeem. In time imeem I am sure will start to see exclusives/remixes.

Mad props to a compnay that keeps hustlin. To the imeem staf I dedicate this:
http://www.imee...k-ross-hustlin/

We are currently in private beta at jamWee. Will your music catalog be available for 3rd party sites to sell music too? And if so, will you increase the margin?

Brandon
CEO
jamWee.com

I think this lesson has been beaten into the ground. Sites with hordes of bandwidth can’t make money from advertising alone. How long will it take Facebook to understand this?

Ooh, that sounds just like a scene from the Godfather 2.0, with the record labels as a multi-headed Don Corleone….

“Listen, imeem, we got an offer you can’t refuse… don’t take it personal, it’s just business. From now on, you’re our tool. We’d rename you ‘tool,’ but there’s already a band by that name. Since you can’t pay us back for all the music you gave away, you’re gonna be our endaround iTunes… Hey, did we say you could speak?! Shut the $%^& up and listen! You will sell our music direct and return most of the profits to us. Not only that, you will go across this Web thing of yours and find out everything that makes money — ringtones, downloads, tickets, dating sites for hermaphrodites — we don’t care. Just make money. Are we understanding each other here?”

Say a prayer for the stupid – and move on to the next socialnet music platform funeral.

Few things:
-As Erick mentioned, we are going to continue to offer iTunes links even when this is fully rolled out. Letting the user make a choice about their preferred music store is important to us. We will also continue to sell downloads from iTunes on our iPhone app on a permanent basis.
-It has been well established that the margins on downloads are not that great. However, Alan is correct in that it is an add-on to our ad business. It is also worth mentioning that this is something our small and large label partners have repeatedly and consistently ASKED us to do. There is more going on here than meets the eye.
-Our overall philosophy on monetizing online music is that there is no “silver bullet” and the right approach is to be pragmatic and monetize all of the touchpoints. That includes advertising, ringtones, downloads, tickets, merchandise, subscriptions, etc. In my opinion the media industry, for instance the newspaper business, have spent too much time searching for the One True Answer to “The Internet Problem” rather than being pragmatic and realizing that it’s going to take a lot of technical innovation through trial-and-error to grind out a business.

-Dalton

http://www.tech...t-cant-collect/

Steve Jobs knew six years ago that the money was in the hardware. It enabled Apple to sell music at cost and spend heavily on advertising, while Apple’s music-only competitors (like buymusic.com) could only try to match the 99-cent price point. Apple used music as low-margin bait to sell high-margin iPods and computers.

Now imeem is going back to 2002? What’s that quote about those who don’t know history being doomed to repeat it?