Myspace’s efforts to update their site’s music functionality by integrating technology purchased with their buyout of Imeem are plodding slowly ahead. There’s been no evidence of an update on site, but this email went out to Imeem users:
The MySpace Music team is working around the clock to duplicate your imeem playlists and make them available to you on myspacemusic.com as soon as possible. In the coming weeks, we will be emailing you with instructions on how to claim your playlists on MySpace Music, using your MySpace login. If you don’t have a MySpace account you can sign up for one here.
If you have questions about MySpace, please visit http://faq.myspace.com/app/home.
Thanks for your patience. We will be in touch soon.
- MySpace Music Team
How a net business with hundreds of millions of dollars of annual revenue can allow so much time to slip by in a market where they’re losing ground every day is hard to fathom – small as Imeem’s fire-sale purchase price may have been compared to Myspace’s turnover, their tech contribution was substantial, and constitutes a big opportunity for Myspace to catch back up to it’s competitors. One can only assume that Imeem were playing harball and not releasing anything before the lawyers had all shaken hands and inked the contracts, and are not particularly motivated by the Murdoch lash. I can see that having your company fail under you and being bought out by Darth Rupert might be disheartening.
Imeem is still waiting for a signature on the deal selling the all-but-defunct company to Myspace – and the writing is far from on the wall as to how successful the integration of the two company’s software and customer bases could possibly be, especially when you take into account MOG’s recent and Spotify’s impending US launches of their streaming music services. Will anyone go to a band’s myspace page to listen to a few tracks if they can just hear the whole catalogue for free on Spotify? Perhaps not, but Myspace must still consider they’ve got a great deal, considering that Imeem spent at least $25 million on building their brand, technology and user base, and the sale price is rumoured to be as low as $1 million. According to Digital Music News, it was a legal dispute with our digital distribution competitor the Orchard that finally pushed the ailing social network over the edge and forced the negotiation of a sale:
“We held an emergency board meeting to shut everything down,” one executive told Digital Music News. “The [Orchard] lawsuit was definitely the final nail.”
Subsequently, other executives close to the situation confirmed the decision. “They just ran out of cash, it was just a cash thing,” one executive shared, also anonymously. “The potential liabilities – $150,000 per stream – could get astronomical. [Imeem] thought they had a case, but they couldn’t afford to fight it.”
I think it’s a shame that Imeem has been forced to give up their autonomy, but the fact of their acquisition by Myspace shows who got the model the right way round; Imeem couldn’t stay afloat because they couldn’t afford to pay for the licensing costs of the music they were using from the advertising they sold, and because they were not efficient enough in properly securing the rights to use it, hence the court case threatened by the Orchard, whereas Myspace gets everyone to sign up their music for free – read their sign-up agreement again – and their proposition snowballed, a little free music, and a few million users kept growing until they had every major act and every teenage girl in America signed up. The combination of huge traffic and no licensing costs meant that they were able to pocket all of their ad revenue, but they are not as attractive a proposition to the artists and record labels as there is no revenue coming back to them in the same way that Spotify sends money upstream per play, unless, like the major labels, you’ve got enough clout to demand a revenue sharing deal. If MOG or Spotify can find a way to include the band info and minor social element that Myspace provided, or perhaps team up with Facebook to provide music streaming and playlist sharing then Myspace will be blown out of the water – regardless of which little social startups they squash into their business in the meantime.
Ailing social giant Myspace is in acquisitive mood. Having just purchased iLike (the same service that just did the music search deal with Google), they’re now in talks to make a deal to buy imeem, the music streaming service that bought SNOCAP, and that is reported to have around 16 million users. Currently imeem is suffering the same difficulties as other free music streaming services like Spotify – balancing the ad income they receive against the licensing and bandwidth costs of streaming tracks.
This deal would provide Myspace with some fresh blood in it’s music department, along with some experience in solving the problems of a high-traffic music streaming service – something which they’re looking hard for at the moment, as a Myspace Music that has to be paid for will inevitably lose a lot of traffic. They’ll also be losing their Google ad revenue, unless they renegotiate the deal, and with dropping traffic and dropping revenue, they are going to have to innovate or die. The deal isn’t closed yet, and there’s been no indication of how the sites and services might be integrated. Rest assured, if it starts looking profitable, we’ll strike a deal to distribute music to them so you don’t miss out.
Click here to read TechCrunch’s article about the acquisition.
Here at RouteNote, we’re constantly trying to find new ways to get your music to earn money for you. To this end, we’ve signed up a new retail partner, imeem. They’re a social network, aimed at introducing their users to new music and video content. While anyone can upload their music to the site, RouteNote artists uploading their music to the site will get a share of the ad revenue imeem makes from anyone visiting their profile pages and listening to their songs.
To start the revenue flowing, you’ll need to revisit the tracks that you want to use on RouteNote and select imeem as one of the retailers for each track. Then create a profile for yourself on imeem and upload the files for the music you’ve selected to your profile. It is very important that you use *exactly* the same file you uploaded to RouteNote for uploading to imeem, as their software matches the files to confirm that your material is the same music we have on file as yours. Without this matching up imeem can’t confirm that you are who we say you are, and will either delete the profile you make, or keep all the money from ad revenues.
If you’re interested in using imeem as a retailer for your music, it’s important that you know what you’re buying into, so please visit their site here: http://www.imeem.com/tour/tourmusic.aspx
Please take the tour and look at their terms and conditions, and if you decide to sign up, we’ll see you onsite!
It has been reported over at Techcrunch that Imeem has purchased Snocap. Both Imeem and Snocap are partners of ours and for all of our artists nothing will change because of this acquisition. It has not yet been confirmed by Imeem if Snocap will still operate under their brand or whether it the Snocap technology and assets will be placed under the Imeem brand.
Stay tuned for more information as it becomes public.
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