Tel Aviv, Israel based MeeMix, which we first covered in August, is kicking-off the New Year by moving their taste-predicting Internet radio service from closed to open Beta.

Internet radio is already a very crowded space dominated by entrenched startups like Last.fm and Pandora. Smaller players and recent entrants such as SpiralFrog, Jango and Slacker are not increasing the breathing room. MeeMix wants its share of the pie, too, and is keeping its crosshairs focused on the U.S. market and its dominant revenue potential.

MeeMix’s public beta launch is marked by the addition of new features:

• Meeps: Comment-based conversations users can have regarding a song, album or artist.
• Station Home: Every MeeMix station now has a dedicated page allowing users to interact in its context and shape its playlist.
• Mee Feeds: This is basically MeeMix’s version of Facebook’s News Feed. The feed indicates songs favorited, stations rated, friends added, etc.
• Mee Journey: Users can see other members’ public log or “journey” of actions in MeeMix.
• Station Gift: Users can now send other members a station as a gift. The station is then the “property” of the recipient who can customize it without affecting the original station.
• Twitter Integration: Users can update their Twitter accounts with songs they’ve listened to, their favorite stations, etc.

MeeMix claims to have doubled its music catalog, but a search for my personal favorites ‘John Coltrane’ and ‘Miles Davis’ came-up empty. The same searches on Jango and Slacker both came-up positive.

I would like to have seen the addition of “genre” to the channel creation wizard which is still limited to artist and song. A widgetized player also would have been a welcome addition, especially the desktop kind.

In my original post, I hypothesized that licensing its engine could become MeeMix’s core business. Looks like this might not be far fetched as the company says they have been approached by a mobile operator for the purpose of powering a taste-based cellular music streaming service. The company has also shared with me some interesting offline deals on the horizon that should keep MeeMix’s potential on a positive note for 2008. We’ll post another update soon. In the meantime, let us know how you think MeeMix compares to the competition.

Update: MeeMix also sent out an email to some users today saying that they will be discontinuing the service in Israel for now due to licensing issues (Thanks Orli):

Social music recommendation service MyStrands has completed the second half of their B round, raising an additional $24 million from Spanish Bank BBVA on top of the $25 million we reported earlier.

BBVA is a financial services group with more than $782 billion in total assets, 42 million customers in 40 countries and a market capitalization of approximately $95 billion. This brings total financing for the Corvallis, OR based startup to $55 million, significantly more than $5 million raised by London-based Last.fm which started around the same time (later sold for $280 million).

MyStands core products are a music recommendation engine for discovering songs you love while on your computer, mobile, and even playing them in bars you frequent. They recently launched a music video product that puts a more pleasant face on YouTube’s music video archives. They’ve made over $12 million in sales from these products during 2007.

Even with revenues pacing nicely, $24 million is a lot of capital and its not clear they really need it. The company says the money will go towards expanding their recommendation engine beyond music, although they’re not saying how quite yet. The most MyStrand’s VP of Communications Gabriel Aldamiz-Echevarria will say is that “…the general idea is to keep building technologies that will help people discover different products and services.”

Well, now they have quite a war chest to pursue that goal.

CrunchGear is reporting that users of the yet to be released Slacker MP3 player will be able to transfer their ‘personalized stations’ to the player with a single click and refresh them via Wi-Fi or USB.

Slacker’s basic music service is similar to Pandora, providing based music player that customizes stations based on whether you like or dislike specific tracks that are free to use and ad-supported. Their iTunes-like software organizes the music on your computer, plays the same radio stations as the web based version, and will sync to the MP3 device.

Slacker has also announced agreements with major labels EMI Music, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group to make the labels’ content available to listeners on the Slacker Personal Radio service. Slacker, which had previously announced a similar agreement with SONY BMG now has agreements with all four major labels that enable listeners to choose from a vast catalog of artists to play on their personal radio stations wherever they are.

The one-click announcement and the record deals are important as it delivers free legal music to Slacker MP3 players, via a one-click Wi-Fi interface; a big marketing advantage over Apple’s iPod.

Slack has taken $53.5 million in funding over two rounds, the last round of $40 million closed 1 June.

When Slacker initially launched their three prong web, desktop, and portable music service, we felt they needed a lot of cash in the bank to take on incumbents like Last.fm and iTunes. It looks like they got that start, with the addition of a whopping $40 million on top of the original $13.5 million series A, according to PEHub. Centennial Ventures and Rho Ventures were new investors, with Austin Ventures, Mission Ventures, and Sevin Rosen Funds returning.

So far Slacker has released two of their three pieces, a web player, and a desktop player. Last.fm, which focused on a web and desktop player, sold for $280 million to CBS after raising $5 million. This additional cash will most likely be going toward product development and manufacturing for the TBA WiFi portable music player and satellite car kit.

One of the more ambitious entrants on the social music scene, Slacker, has released the second piece of their three-part music personalization suite, a desktop music player.

Slacker’s player shares a lot of the core functionality of MyStrands and Last.fm. Users create a personalized radio stream by entering a keyword into the player. There is no rewind and specific songs can not be played. Users train the player on personal music preference voting for and against tracks played. Each song also features album art and a short synopsis of the band, but Slacker lacks the personal and band wiki pages users have gravitated toward on the other services.

Unlike Last.fm, iLike, and MOG, Slacker doesn’t track music you play in iTunes. Instead Slacker functions as a stand alone player that manages personal music libraries and delivers cool music visualizations.

The lack of iTunes integration is likely due to the expected release of Slacker’s own portable music player, which will integrate with the desktop player. Users will be able to push songs, playlists, and preferences to their portable player from their desktop. Eventually, Slacker’s three parts will work in sync, each updating the others with your latest preferences.

The founding team of new music service Slacker, which launched this morning, includes three former music startup CEOs (Dennis Mudd, Musicmatch, acquired by Yahoo), Jim Cady (Rio) and Jonathan Sasse (iRiver). And they’re going to need these guys and their connections, because Slacker isn’t just some new music service. They have broad reaching goals that bring them face to face with iTunes/iPod and Sirius/XM, as well as startups like Last.fm, Pandora, and every one of these services.

The basic music service is very similar to Pandora (see screen shot at bottom of post). It’s a web based music player that customizes stations based on whether you like or dislike specific tracks. Like Pandora, you can’t play specific tracks on request, but you can certainly listen to a certain genre of music. Slacker is also trying to connect related songs, and in my limited testing it does a good job, although not as well as Pandora. This basic service is free and ad-supported (visual ads on screen only).

Here’s where things get interesting. Although Slacker is only launching its web based music player today, they have PC based, iTunes-like software coming that will organize the music on your computer as well as play the same radio stations as the web based version. If you pay a $7.50/month fee, all “favorited” songs that you hear on the radio stations will be saved to your computer, and the ads will be removed from the service.

And that’s not all, folks. Slacker also has hardware ambitions. They have a portable, iPod-like wifi enabled device coming, with a very large 4 inch color screen. The device will automatically sync with the Slacker PC software via wifi and will also cache songs to be played on saved radio stations. The device will range from $150 to $300 based on storage capacity.

Finally, they also have a satellite car kit in the works that will ensure that wherever you are, Slacker is with you.

Since the only service available now is the web player, there isn’t a whole lot to review. But Slacker just picked a fight with just about every major online music company I can think of. Like the Zune and (I assume) future versions of the iPod (and don’t forget Music Gremlin), the portable device is wifi enabled. Their PC based software is a direct competitor to iTunes, and the service as a whole also competes with the plethora of subscription music services available. The satellite product may also lure customers away from Sirius and XM.

So there are lots and lots of established players with loyal customers who are going to fight this thing tooth and nail. Slacker has raised $13.5 million in funding from Sevin Rosen, Austin Ventures and Mission Ventures – they will probably need a whole lot more to pull this off.

Slacker is based in San Diego.