Last month, MySpace finally completed its deal to acquire troubled music startup Imeem. Unfortunately for imeem fans, the bank shut the service down as soon as the deal was completed, redirecting them to a MySpace Music splash screen. MySpace was subsequently trashed by outraged users who wanted their playlists back. Today, they’re getting what they asked for: MySpace has just sent out an Email to imeem users, informing them that they’ll be able to restore their playlists using a new import tool. We’ve confirmed with MySpace that the feature is now live.
The process is simple: users enter their imeem Email address, hit “Import Playlists”, and will find their imeem playlists restored under the “My Music” section of MySpace Music. The playlists will behave as normal MySpace playlists do, but will be labeled to indicate that they originated from imeem. The process should be seamless for most users, but there are a few caveats: MySpace won’t be able to restore songs where there are differences between the imeem and MySpace music license catalogs. MySpace says this won’t be an issue for most songs, but didn’t have an exact percentage for how much of the catalogs overlap.
It’s worth pointing out again that MySpace didn’t really have anything to do with the shutdown of imeem — it would have shut down anyway as its licences expired and money ran out. We’re hearing this actually took quite a bit of work from MySpace’s end, as they had to pair up thousands of songs to prepare for the import process.
Here’s the Email message being sent to imeem users:
We’re happy to share that we’ve recreated your imeem playlists on MySpace Music. We spent a lot of time and effort to make a home for your music on our platform. Beginning today you’ll be able to access your playlists. Here’s how:
1) Access your playlist by clicking here: http://www.myspace.com/music/import-playlists. You will need to be logged into MySpace. Click here to login or signup for MySpace.
2) Enter your imeem e-mail address.
3) Click import and we will retrieve your playlists.
4) Upon completion, your playlists will be stored in “My Music,” our playlist management tool. All playlists can be identified by the name “import_[yourplaylistname]”
This process isn’t perfect and while we expect most of your content to have migrated from imeem to MySpace Music, we appreciate your understanding if any discrepancies between the two music catalogs affected your individual playlists.
If you have questions, please visit http://faq.myspace.com/app/home.
Thanks,
The MySpace Music Team
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