I’m here at Capitol Records in Hollywood, California for a special media event where Lala, MySpace, iLike, Google and others are officially announcing the launch of Google’s Music Onebox — a special new kind of Google search result that will let you instantly stream songs directly from Google’s results page. We first broke the news of the feature’s impending launch last week, though none of the companies involved have been willing to comment on it until now.

Here’s how the new feature will work: Onebox will let users stream songs directly from Google’s search result page, and will also include additional content like tour information and music videos (the actual content shown will vary depending on the partner — more on that later). Enter a query for “Use Somebody”, and you’re going to see a small ‘play’ button in your search result that lets you stream the Kings of Leon song in its entirety, or buy the song. Clicking on the play button will bring up a small browser window that will immediately start streaming your song.

I’ve always considered the Grooveshark web app’s UI to be quite amazing, so I was wary when I was granted preview access to the service’s new look, which the startup is presenting publicly for the first time today (at 12 AM EST). Fortunately, they somehow managed to make it even more awesome than it already was, and the makeover was more than a new lick of paint as it also included a number of performance tweaks to make it run smoother.

In case you’re not familiar with Grooveshark: it’s a great web-based music search, play and management tool that’s been around since April last year. You can use the app to instantly look for and listen to music, and there’s the quintessential social component that allows you to interact with people from its community and discover new music from others’ choices.

iMeem may go down in the history books as the little company that could. The service morphed from an instant-messaging centric social network into a widget service to a full on music streaming service (read an early post by us on iMeem here). Over the years they’ve been close to shutting down more than once. And yet, they’re still here, and still fighting.

In May news broke that iMeem may have found a lifeline with new funding and a new business plan, although there was still an issue of $4 million owed to Warner Music.

Now we’ve been able to confirm some of the rumors around that financing. As suspected it was a recapitalization, which means that earlier investors were mostly wiped out. A recap is a difficult pill to swallow, but once it’s completed a company can get a fresh start. And, importantly, current employees get refreshed stock options and an incentive to continue the fight.

I’m a Web fanatic, I admit. But you probably already knew that… My work environment has been completely web based for years now. The same applies to my music. Like many people, I used to download music from Kazaa or eMule (Yeah, I know some of you still do). Most of the time now, I listen to music on the web and don’t have any need to download it. My laptop benefits the most from this inclination since it’s not weighed down by music files, thus saving me tons of space and virus headaches (you eMule users know what I’m talking about). Anyhow, if I do choose to download music, I can always do it over at iTunes or my favorite place in the web: Jamendo.

Music plays a large role in our lives. Since the web now plays an even bigger part, combining the two together has become unavoidable. The greatest thing about this powerful duo is that you don’t need to spend a lot of time searching for music you like — just use this nifty guide list and you’ll find just about everything you need to enjoy hours of good music. The sound quality changes from service to service, but overall, it’s good enough for regular web usage.

Does embattled music streaming site imeem think it can take on iTunes? For the most part, nearly every streaming song on the site has a download button which links to both iTunes and the Amazon MP3 store. But it is quietly testing its own music download store which bypasses iTunes and Amazon and sells MP3s directly. For instance, this is the case with some Sub Pop artists, such as Iron and Wine and The Shins. When you hit the download button on songs for those artists, a window pops up showing the album where that song came from with with the option to download the entire album or any individual song for $0.99. You can then pay imeem directly by credit card or Paypal and download the song to your computer.

(Screenshots after the jump).

Imeem has a great Android app. In fact, it’s still one of the few very good apps available on that platform as it continues to find its legs. It’s so good that we gave it a Crunchie this year. But as good as it is, it took the application coming to the iPhone platform to push the company past a big milestone: 1 million mobile platform installs.

Imeem Mobile for the iPhone, which we were the first to report on back in May right before it launched, already accounts for 1/3 of Imeem’s mobile users, we’re told. It’s been consistently in the top 5 music apps and near the top 50 overall in the App Store since then. But does that mean that it’s better than the Android version? No, in fact, it’s worse for one reason: It can’t run in the background.

In an honest blog post, music recommendation and streaming service Blip.fm (which we likened to a Twitter for music when it launched almost exactly one year ago), CEO Jeff Yasuda has indicated that the startup is going through a rough phase right now that has forced it to make some fairly painful changes to their service.

The blog post, titled ‘Navigating the storm’, speaks volumes about Yasuda’s sentiments on the music industry in general, even if they are not all that outspoken. A short excerpt:

The challenges involved in running a start-up in the music space are immense. To be honest it’s completely nuts, but we are trying to navigate our way through the perfect storm: a struggling music industry, a global economic meltdown, and a fundamental shift in the way people relate to one another and share their appreciation for music.

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 MyMusic service to put your music on their servers.

How bad are things getting for music streaming startups? We knew that imeem was on the verge of shutting down before getting a last-minute cash infusion from some of its investors, but an SEC filing from Warner Music adds some more details about exactly how dire imeem’s situation is, as well as that of another music startup, Lala.

Warner Music Group, an investor in both imeem and Lala, thinks they are no longer worth much, if anything at all. It wrote down its entire investment in imeem and half of its investment in Lala in the most recent quarter. As detailed in its 10Q report filed with the SEC, it took a $16 million charge to write down its investment in imeem, and an $11 million charge to write down part of its investment in Lala, plus it took another $4 million charge to write down a bad debt from imeem which it never expects to collect. That comes to a total of $33 million down the digital music drain.

Insert your favorite cliche or idiom here: Imeem may have dodged a bullet. Or has risen from the ashes. They have nine lives. Or my favorite: they may have pulled a rabbit out of the deadpool.

The point is, they aren’t going to be closing down any time soon, say sources close to the company. And for a free music streaming company, that’s really saying something.

Weeks ago they were on the ropes, near the end of cash and with crushing venture debt obligations threatening to shut them down entirely. No one was interested in buying them or putting in more cash with big music label royalty commitments already past due.

Then we heard whispers that they may have a plan to build a profitable business. And apparently they’ve convinced at least their current investors to back that plan with more capital.

CNET’s Greg Sandoval reported earlier today that the company may have raised new funding (he used the “dodged a bullet” idiom, by the way). We’ve confirmed that the company has raised a new round of financing from existing investors. There’s no word if Sequoia has put new money in, and we’ve been told the amount raised is small, likely in the single digit millions. But it allows iMeem to make payroll and keep the servers running.

More importantly, the company has forged new deals with the music labels, we’ve heard, that help it break away from the crushing pay-per-stream model that’s impossible to cover with advertising.

One of the reasons that Internet music streaming services Pandora, imeem and Last.fm have been able to build large audiences is because they are run by people who have a passion for music. Or should I say, a passion for music beyond pop music. With Goom Radio, I’m not so sure.

Not only is Goom clearly trying to play the popular music card with a website littered with the likes of Coldplay, Kanye West, Beyonce and Britney Spears, but it promises to have “passionate programmers” and DJs. I don’t know about you, but I had two core reasons that I stopped listening to tradtional radtio long ago: Crap music, and DJs. Goom, apparently, sees those as strong suits.

I’ve been tracking the progress of Vienna, Austria-based music startup tunesBag for a while now. It’s essentially a social music player that can best be compared to the likes of Lala, imeem and Anywhere.fm in the sense that it allows you to upload your entire MP3 collection, stream it from anywhere over the Internet and share it with your friends. It’s completely free and claims to be perfectly legal under Austrian law, which I’m not sure will be enough of a shield against sue-happy music labels should it become popular.

TunesBag doesn’t bring anything truly innovative to the table, but it’s always nice to know there are alternatives available, and tunesBag is a strong contender that too often remains under the radar, even if you need an invite code to get in for now.

Today, the company is hoping to change that with the release of an Adobe AIR-powered application (hence available for Windows, Mac and Linux) that brings some of its goodness to the desktop. You’ll still need an invitation code to access the service for now, but hopefully they will open up to the masses soon. Update: TunesBag came through with 500 invites. Sign up here or use the code TECHCRUNCH.

Imeem, the free streaming music site backed by Sequoia Capital, Warner Music and other prominent investors, is rumored to be in serious trouble.

Music insiders are saying a shutdown of the company is imminent after a failed attempt to sell the company or raise more cash. A spokesperson flatly denied the shutdown rumors today, but confirmed that the company layed off staff last week (six people from a staff of around 70). He wouldn’t comment on funding or sale rumors, although plenty of potential buyers tell us they’ve been pitched to buy the company over the last year.

The “problem” with Imeem, like all streaming music services, is that they have to pay a flat rate per stream to the music labels that’s hard to cover with advertising alone. Some companies pay as much as $0.01 per stream, which doesn’t seem like a lot – but at volume it’s crushing, particularly in a down advertising market.

One source tells us that Imeem owes the labels as much as $30 million to date with no hope of paying any of it. Imeem says that is “extremely innacurate,” but confirms that they are playing “in excess of a billion songs and videos per month.”

Music recommendation engine / social network Last.fm has launched an official, feature-rich application for the Android platform that enables users to stream radio stations (including personalized streaming radio), consult up-to-date concert information and also offers the ability to track users’ listening habits based on their Last.fm profile.

The company says the application should be available here, but I’m not seeing anything there yet so maybe we should just be patient until they get around to effectively have the app up for download on Android Market. (It’s also nowhere to be found when you actually search from the G1).

Update: it’s available from the phone now.

The application enables users to access their Last.fm profile and millions of streaming tracks on Android-powered phones, and supports ‘background playback’ so you can listen to music while you access other programs.

MOG demo’d the next version of their popular music service to me today, and I was impressed. It combines a best of breed interface with free on demand streaming and a Pandora-like music recommendation engine. The trouble is, it may never launch because only two of the four major music labels are supporting it so far.

MOG has a history of doing cool new things around music. The service today includes a media player plugin that records and analyzes your music habits, a website that has a dedicated page for every artist, album and song with user generated reviews and posts, and an advertising network that provides revenue for 300 top music blogs. Users can also stream music via an excellent front end to Rhapsody.

All of that brings about 5 million unique visitors a month to their network, and the company says they should bring in about $5 million in revenue in 2009.

What were the top social media sites of 2008? ComScore came out with its worldwide traffic stats for November a few days ago (so these don’t include December). They are a mix of social networks and blogging platforms. Blogger, the orange line in the chart above, still rules the roost with an estimated 222 million unique worldwide visitors in November (up 44 percent from November, 2007). Facebook, the blue line, is on pace to pass it soon with 200 million unique visitors (up 116 percent). (Note, though, that this is more than the 140 million active users Facebook itself reports—go figure). MySpace is pretty steady at 126 million uniques. Wordpress is a close fourth and gaining with 114 million (up 68 percent). And Windows Live Spaces is down 22 percent to 87 million uniques.

ComScore keeps a list of what it calls “social networking” sites, but these include blogging platforms and other social media sites as well. While the audience for blogs is still showing healthy growth overall, Facebook stands out as the social gorilla taking share from not only other social networks but blogs and other social media as well. Below are the top 20 sites on comScore’s social networking list.

Last night we released the finalist names for the Crunchies Awards. Vote here for who you think should win. We’ve set up a site that is pretty self-explanatory, with all of the names of each finalist for every category, along with links to their Websites and Crunchbase profiles where you can learn more about each one before voting. The Crunchies represents the best the Web had to offer in 2008, and you get to help choose who will win. Below is a voter’s guide for two of the major categories to get you started.

Best Overall is the big prize. Amazon Web Services makes it as a finalist this year because of the sheer number of startups that are built on top of its cloud computing infrastructure. Facebook won last year, but makes a return as a nominee due to popular demand. Facebook continued to gain massive mainstream adoption in 2008 (with 140 million members now) and launched some major initiatives to extend its social computing platform beyond its site, most notably Facebook Connect (which by itself is a finalist for Best Technology Innovation, going up against Google Friend Connect). But does Facebook deserve to win again?

Music streaming service Project Playlist has 40 million users if you believe their home page, or around 10 million if you go by Comscore unique monthly visitors. Either way, it’s a lot. They’ve got a hot new CEO, raised a big round of financing, and finally signed a deal with a big label.

But they’re also in a very vulnerable position right now. Litigation with the other three labels continues, and they’ve been banned from both MySpace and Facebook after those labels threatened to sue them, too. Embedding music playlists on social networks is the key to Project Playlist’s continued growth, and that door has been closed.

And Project Playlist’s competitors have certainly noticed.

Just in via Twitter: Pandora has registered its 20 millionth user. The three-year old music streaming service is trying to hold its own despite tough economics and recent layoffs.

Its music-recommendation engine pumps out personalized radio stations over the Web, and its iPhone app remains one the top free apps on iTunes (currently No. 21).

Today, CBS Interactive is laying off people across several of its properties, I’ve confirmed with the company. CBS is not saying which divisions or how many people are affected. It is positioning the layoffs as part of the integration process it began six months ago when it bought CNET for $1.8 billion. But it is not just the CNET businesses that are being cut.

I’ve also confirmed that earlier today employees at social music site Last.FM were let go. CBS bought Last.fm in 2007 for $280 million. One source puts the number of layoffs at as many as 40 people, mostly from LAst.FM’s London HQ, which has a total staff of 95. A spokesperson for CBS Interactive says that number is inaccurate on the high side, but won’t provide the correct number. In any case, it is likely a small fraction of the overall number of employees being laid off across CBS Interactive. Update: CBS says the number of Last.fm layoffs is less than 20, which would put it at about 20 percent.