Myspace to acquire imeem – what fate for 16 million users?
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.
