Imeem
Encyclopedia
The online service imeem was a social media
web site where users interacted with each other by streaming
, uploading and sharing music and music videos. However, after MySpace
acquired the service, it was shut down, in 2009.
The company was founded in 2003 by Dalton Caldwell
(formerly of VA Linux
) and Jan Jannink (formerly of Napster
), and many of its core engineering team came from the original Napster
file-sharing service. The company takes its name from "meme
", a term coined by biologist Richard Dawkins
to describe the ideas and cultural phenomena that spread as if they had a life of their own.
Helping to pioneer the free, advertising-supported model for online music, imeem permitted consumers to legally upload, stream and share music and music playlists for free with the costs supported by advertising. In 2007, imeem became the first-ever online music site to secure licenses from all four U.S. major music labels to offer their music catalogs for free streaming and sharing on the web.
The company also created the web's first embeddable music and video playlists. People could use imeem's widgets to embed songs and playlists from imeem virtually anywhere on the web, including on their MySpace
and Facebook
profiles or on their personal blogs.
Headquartered in San Francisco's South of Market district (SoMa), imeem had additional offices in New York
and Los Angeles
. The company's investors included Morgenthaler
Ventures and Warner Music Group
.
On December 8, 2009, imeem was bought out by MySpace Music in a firesale for an undisclosed amount. However, it is stated to have been less than $1 million.
/American Legacy Foundation, Kia Motors
, and Dr Pepper
, among others.
The company was one of the pioneers of the ad-supported streaming music model. In 2007, imeem became the first-ever online music site to secure licenses from all 4 major music labels to offer their music catalogs for free streaming and sharing on the web.
Under this model, artists and labels were paid a share of imeem's ad revenue in proportion to the popularity of their music on imeem, and had the right to register their content and determine how (or whether) that content is available on the site or through its embeddable widgets.
This business model was made possible by imeem's proprietary content fingerprinting and digital registry technology. Initially, imeem licensed this technology from SNOCAP
, the digital rights and content management startup founded by Napster
creator Shawn Fanning
. In 2008, imeem acquired SNOCAP and its technology outright. imeem continued to operate the SNOCAP digital registry, and used the technology acquired from SNOCAP to power its ad-supported streaming music service.
service for mobile devices. In addition, the company offered a premium service, imeem VIP, that gave people access to additional features on the imeem site.
One of imeem's key features was the playlist
. Users could create personal playlists, via a "Create Music Playlist" page, with music they had uploaded themselves or with music and video already available on the site. They could publish and share these playlists on imeem, where they could be played by, shared with, commented on, or tagged by other users.
Visitors could also share music, videos and playlists beyond imeem, either by embedding imeem players into external sites.
/iPod touch
platforms.
Users could create custom Internet radio stations based on their favorite artists, discover new music through personalized recommendations and buy DRM-free MP3 downloads directly onto their mobile device (on Android, downloads are from the Amazon MP3 application; on the iPhone and iPod touch, downloads are from the iTunes Store.
The app also enabled people to browse and stream their personal imeem music libraries to their mobile device. People could upload up to 20,000 songs of the music they own directly to imeem.com, and then access that music through their mobile devices. To upload more than 100 songs, users had to subscribe to one of imeem's premium services.
The company introduced imeem Mobile on the Android platform in October 2008, and launched it for iPhone and iPod touch users in May 2009. At launch, it was the only streaming music application on the Android platform, which in turn led to it being one of the most popular applications installed on Android devices. In June 2009, imeem Mobile crossed a milestone of over 1 million installs on the Android and iPhone platforms.
The application received several awards, including a 2009 Crunchie Award for Best Mobile Application, the Editor's Choice award from the blog AndroidGuys, and an award for 'Best Streaming Music App' in the 2009 Android Network Awards.
in resolution. There were three imeem VIP subscription tiers. * The imeem "VIP" plans started at US$
$9.99 per year for the "VIP Lite" plan, which gave subscribers access to streaming songs through the VIP Player, and 480p video (up from 360p for basic users). The "VIP" subscription option allowed uploading of up to 1,000 songs and viewing of 720p video, for $29.99 per year. And the "VIP Plus" subscription allowed uploading of up to 20,000 songs and viewing of 1080p video, for $99.99 per year
, blog
ging, instant messaging
and file sharing
. The service was billed as a "distributed
, peer-to-peer
, social network
".
Founder Dalton Caldwell
began working on what would become the imeem messaging application during Thanksgiving weekend in 2003. Initially, he worked on the software from his home. In 2004, imeem moved into offices in downtown Palo Alto's 285 Hamilton building, with Caldwell, Jannink and a small team of engineers continuing work on the software.
The company first unveiled its software in February 2005 at the DEMO conference
and formally launched it that August.
When imeem first launched, to use the service, users were required to download and install the desktop messaging and file-sharing software; the imeem Web site merely existed as a means for users to register and download the client. Though originally designed for messaging, it was the file-sharing function that took off. The client software supported the service's distributed database model: Every imeem client on the network had a database that would generate and store references to media content shared on the network; this system would accelerate access to content deemed to be close to the user. The service's media-sharing was peer-to-peer – if a user shared photos or a podcast, then the data would only exist on the client database network; users who wanted to view the actual content would access it by peering directly with the publisher.
(SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas
, with a new focus on enabling people to interact through the imeem.com website, using media (photos, videos, music) to express their personalities and interests. Timed to coincide with the re-launch, imeem introduced new features enabling users to upload and play music and video on the site.
In September 2006, imeem introduced embeddable Adobe Flash
-based playlists that gave people the ability to take music and video playlists they created (or found) on the site and embed them virtually anywhere on the web. The company's players quickly became popular with consumers using MySpace and other social networks, giving them a way to customize & personalize their profiles with music.
As a result, imeem quickly gained traction, with the site's traffic growing to 10 million unique monthly users by the end of 2006. By March 2007, imeem's monthly traffic reached over 16 million unique monthly users.
took steps to limit the posting of imeem content on its site: any updates or comments with "imeem" even mentioned in them were removed upon posting. However, MySpace stopped blocking imeem in 2008.
In March 2007, imeem announced it was partnering with SNOCAP
, the digital rights and content management startup founded by Napster creator Shawn Fanning, to enable legal uploading, streaming and sharing of music on imeem, utilizing SNOCAP's content fingerprinting and digital registry technology. The goal was to provide a way for consumers to upload and share music with their friends, for free, and to do so in a way where label and artists can both make money and have greater control over where and how their music was available.
The partnership marked imeem's move to an ad-supported model, in which consumers could freely stream and share music and video content with the costs supported by advertising. Under this model, artists and labels are paid a share of the site's ad revenue in proportion to the popularity of their music on imeem, and have the right to register their content and determine whether that content is available on the site or through its embeddable widgets.
Ultimately, the imeem messaging and file-sharing application had proven to be something of a resource hog for power-users, since the database could grow to large proportions just by associating with a few individuals who were sharing a lot of content. This messaging product was ultimately phased out; the site became entirely Web-based beginning in June 2007. While this distributed model was interesting and received positive press, it proved to be difficult to attract many users since the only way to participate was to download the imeem client software. Over time, imeem integrated many of the client's features into its website and the innovative distributed database model was been centralized.
Throughout the first half of 2007, imeem had negotiated with the major labels to secure licenses for this new model. Warner Music Group
and imeem announced a licensing agreement for imeem's new Web-based service in July 2007, followed by Sony Music Entertainment
and EMI
Music in September. In December 2007, imeem signed a licensing agreement with Universal Music Group
, becoming the first online music service to partner with all four major music labels to let people legally stream and share music for free online.
On February 1, 2008, imeem acquired SNOCAP. It had already been making extensive use of SNOCAP's audio fingerprinting technology and music database. As part of the acquisition, SNOCAP's chief operating officer, Ali Aydar
(ex-Napster
), joined imeem.
On March 24, 2008 imeem announced the launch of a developer's platform that will permit third-party developers to interact with imeem data.
In April 2008, imeem received a new round of funding from Sequoia Capital
.
In October 2008, imeem launched imeem Mobile, a free mobile music application. However, on the 22nd of that month, the company laid off 25% of its staff.
It seemed possible the company could close in April 2009, but it was able to renegotiate deals with its major label partners, and subsequently found enough new investors to continue service. Sources told TechCrunch that imeem raised $6 million in this most recent funding round, with Morgenthaler Ventures and Warner Music Group among those investing.
The company launched imeem Mobile for the iPhone and iPod touch in May 2009. In June 2009, imeem Mobile crossed a milestone of over 1 million installs on the Android and iPhone platforms.
On June 25, 2009, imeem announced that it was removing all user-uploaded video and photos from the site. This move, and the lack of advance notice, was unpopular with many users.
In October 2009, imeem and Google announced the integration of links to music on imeem within Google search results; imeem was one of several online music companies involved in such efforts.
) acquired imeem, and angered many imeem users when the new parent company closed down the beleaguered service on the same day, redirecting all imeem traffic to MySpace Music. Furthermore, MySpace social network did not pay artists or labels the money still owed to them by imeem for music streaming. The controversial closure was criticized as a sign that MySpace was out of touch with the times. MySpace, on December 22, 2009, assured imeem.com users that their playlists are safe and that they are currently duplicating every users' playlist and will migrate them on to MySpace Music as soon as possible. MySpace assured that features and functionality that users were used to at imeem would soon find their way onto MySpace, and complement the existing platform alongside free full-song streaming, artist profiles, music videos, and more. MySpace will email imeem users the instructions on how to claim their playlists.
On January 15, 2010, MySpace began allowing users to import imeem playlists. However, songs that are currently not available via MySpace Music were not converted over, and there was no means provided to even recover the names of the missing tracks. Additionally, user "favorites" metadata was not able to be carried over, with the result that users who depended upon their favorites lists instead of normal playlists were unable to retrieve their music. Other complaints include incorrect artist info, garbled tracks, and an increase in between-songs advertising.
, some used the Linux
operating system. The Web site heavily used Ajax
programming and Flash
animation.
Audio streams were delivered as 128 kbps-quality MPEG-2 Audio Layer III (MP3) format. Video was encoded in the Sorenson Video codec
at >700kbps, in the Flash Video (FLV) container format, with resolution resized to 400 pixels wide and preserving its aspect ratio, and with embedded mp3 audio at 96 kbps. While the video quality and resolution was significantly better than other video sites at that time (YouTube, for example, used 300kbps video) the late-arriving video sharing aspect of imeem was largely eclipsed by the original audio sharing component. In 2008 imeem upgraded the video quality further and became one of the first media sharing sites to offer video encoded with the MPEG 4 H.264
codec and at the original source resolution.
The original imeem client software conducted most of its network activity using an encrypted
protocol, making it difficult to monitor user activity. Thus, conversations via the client's IM functionality and group chats were encrypted and only visible to participants. On startup, the application validated with a central server. This ensured that unauthorized clients could not connect and run malicious exploits (such as for monitoring network traffic or spoofing identities) against the network. Software updates were also delivered via the client and authenticated before they were installed. The company's move to a Web-based file-sharing business model in 2007 made most of these considerations moot.
announced on July 12, 2007 that it had dropped its copyright infringement lawsuit against imeem by agreeing to license its music and video content to the site for a percentage of imeem's advertising revenue. Financial details were not disclosed. Under the agreement, imeem could carry music and videos from all of the record company's artists. Warner also released financial statements indicating that it invested $15 million into imeem.
for artists, bands, clubs, films, schools, festivals, concert tours, friends, and sports enthusiasts. A late redesign of the site replaced most of the "meem" references with the familiar word "group". Early on, it had been possible for links to be made between groups which had related subject matter, but this feature had only been implemented in the original client software. After the transition to the Web-only service model, it became impossible for users to add (or even remove) such links, although official imeem-created groups sometimes had links added at creation time, by an administrative means not available to subscribers.
Social media
The term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,...
web site where users interacted with each other by streaming
Streaming media
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...
, uploading and sharing music and music videos. However, after MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
acquired the service, it was shut down, in 2009.
The company was founded in 2003 by Dalton Caldwell
Dalton Caldwell
Dalton Caldwell is a technologist and digital music entrepreneur. He is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Mixed Media Labs.-Biography:...
(formerly of VA Linux
Geeknet
Geeknet, Inc. is a Mountain View, California company that owns several computer tech-related websites and the online retailer ThinkGeek. Formerly known as VA Research, VA Linux Systems, VA Software, and SourceForge, Inc., it was founded in 1993.-VA Research:VA Research was founded in November...
) and Jan Jannink (formerly of Napster
Napster
Napster is an online music store and a Best Buy company. It was originally founded as a pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing Internet service that emphasized sharing audio files that were typically digitally encoded music as MP3 format files...
), and many of its core engineering team came from the original Napster
Napster
Napster is an online music store and a Best Buy company. It was originally founded as a pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing Internet service that emphasized sharing audio files that were typically digitally encoded music as MP3 format files...
file-sharing service. The company takes its name from "meme
Meme
A meme is "an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena...
", a term coined by biologist Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
to describe the ideas and cultural phenomena that spread as if they had a life of their own.
Helping to pioneer the free, advertising-supported model for online music, imeem permitted consumers to legally upload, stream and share music and music playlists for free with the costs supported by advertising. In 2007, imeem became the first-ever online music site to secure licenses from all four U.S. major music labels to offer their music catalogs for free streaming and sharing on the web.
The company also created the web's first embeddable music and video playlists. People could use imeem's widgets to embed songs and playlists from imeem virtually anywhere on the web, including on their MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
and Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
profiles or on their personal blogs.
Headquartered in San Francisco's South of Market district (SoMa), imeem had additional offices in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
and Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
. The company's investors included Morgenthaler
Morgenthaler
- People :* Walter Morgenthaler , Swiss psychiatry* Otto Morgenthaler * Ernst Morgenthaler , a Swiss painter* Wendelin Morgenthaler , German politician * Hans Morgenthaler , Swiss poet...
Ventures and Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group is the third largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry, making it one of the big four record companies...
.
On December 8, 2009, imeem was bought out by MySpace Music in a firesale for an undisclosed amount. However, it is stated to have been less than $1 million.
Business model
Revenue generation at imeem was through a combination of direct and indirect advertising sales, sales of MP3 downloads, ringtones and concert tickets, and subscription revenue from premium services. The bulk of its revenue came from advertising; advertisers who ran direct campaigns with imeem included TheTruth.comTheTruth.com
TheTruth.com is an anti-smoking campaign in the United States. The campaign is run by the American Legacy Foundation, which was founded under the terms of the Master Settlement Agreement, between the US tobacco companies and 46 US states and 5 territories...
/American Legacy Foundation, Kia Motors
Kia Motors
Kia Motors , headquartered in Seoul, is South Korea's second-largest automobile manufacturer, following the Hyundai Motor Company, with sales of over 1.4 million vehicles in 2010...
, and Dr Pepper
Dr Pepper
Dr Pepper is a soft drink, marketed as having a unique flavor. The drink was created in the 1880s by Charles Alderton of Waco, Texas and first served around 1885. Dr Pepper was first nationally marketed in the United States in 1904 and is now also sold in Europe, Asia, Canada, Mexico, Australia ...
, among others.
The company was one of the pioneers of the ad-supported streaming music model. In 2007, imeem became the first-ever online music site to secure licenses from all 4 major music labels to offer their music catalogs for free streaming and sharing on the web.
Under this model, artists and labels were paid a share of imeem's ad revenue in proportion to the popularity of their music on imeem, and had the right to register their content and determine how (or whether) that content is available on the site or through its embeddable widgets.
This business model was made possible by imeem's proprietary content fingerprinting and digital registry technology. Initially, imeem licensed this technology from SNOCAP
SNOCAP
BackgroundThe company was founded by Shawn Fanning , Jordan Mendelson, and Ron Conway. Other SNOCAP employees included music lawyer Christian Castle, the company's first General Counsel, and Ali Aydar, the company's Chief Operating Officer, who joined imeem after its acquisition of SNOCAP in April...
, the digital rights and content management startup founded by Napster
Napster
Napster is an online music store and a Best Buy company. It was originally founded as a pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing Internet service that emphasized sharing audio files that were typically digitally encoded music as MP3 format files...
creator Shawn Fanning
Shawn Fanning
Shawn Fanning is an American computer programmer, serial entrepreneur, and angel investor. He developed Napster, one of the first popular peer-to-peer file sharing platforms, in 1998. The popularity of Napster was widespread and Fanning was featured on the cover of Time magazine...
. In 2008, imeem acquired SNOCAP and its technology outright. imeem continued to operate the SNOCAP digital registry, and used the technology acquired from SNOCAP to power its ad-supported streaming music service.
Products
The company provided two main services: imeem.com, where people could discover, stream and share music and music videos for free, and imeem Mobile, an Internet radioInternet radio
Internet radio is an audio service transmitted via the Internet...
service for mobile devices. In addition, the company offered a premium service, imeem VIP, that gave people access to additional features on the imeem site.
imeem.com
Registered users of the site could stream and share millions of songs and tens of thousands of music videos free of charge, with the costs for licensing and streaming supported by advertising on the site and on imeem Mobile.One of imeem's key features was the playlist
Playlist
In its most general form, a playlist is simply a list of songs. They can be played in sequential or shuffled order. The term has several specialized meanings in the realms of radio broadcasting and personal computers.-In radio:...
. Users could create personal playlists, via a "Create Music Playlist" page, with music they had uploaded themselves or with music and video already available on the site. They could publish and share these playlists on imeem, where they could be played by, shared with, commented on, or tagged by other users.
Visitors could also share music, videos and playlists beyond imeem, either by embedding imeem players into external sites.
imeem Mobile
With the free cell phone application imeem Mobile, users could discover, purchase and enjoy music on their mobile device. It was available as a free download to users on the Android and iPhoneIPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
/iPod touch
IPod touch
The iPod Touch is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, handheld game console, and Wi-Fi mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The iPod Touch adds the multi-touch graphical user interface to the iPod line...
platforms.
Users could create custom Internet radio stations based on their favorite artists, discover new music through personalized recommendations and buy DRM-free MP3 downloads directly onto their mobile device (on Android, downloads are from the Amazon MP3 application; on the iPhone and iPod touch, downloads are from the iTunes Store.
The app also enabled people to browse and stream their personal imeem music libraries to their mobile device. People could upload up to 20,000 songs of the music they own directly to imeem.com, and then access that music through their mobile devices. To upload more than 100 songs, users had to subscribe to one of imeem's premium services.
The company introduced imeem Mobile on the Android platform in October 2008, and launched it for iPhone and iPod touch users in May 2009. At launch, it was the only streaming music application on the Android platform, which in turn led to it being one of the most popular applications installed on Android devices. In June 2009, imeem Mobile crossed a milestone of over 1 million installs on the Android and iPhone platforms.
The application received several awards, including a 2009 Crunchie Award for Best Mobile Application, the Editor's Choice award from the blog AndroidGuys, and an award for 'Best Streaming Music App' in the 2009 Android Network Awards.
imeem VIP
In 2008, imeem launched a premium imeem VIP service that gave subscribers access to additional site features, most prominently the ability to upload more music (over 100 songs), and to watch videos up to 1080p1080p
1080p is the shorthand identification for a set of HDTV high-definition video modes that are characterized by 1080 horizontal lines of resolution and progressive scan, meaning the image is not interlaced as is the case with the 1080i display standard....
in resolution. There were three imeem VIP subscription tiers. * The imeem "VIP" plans started at US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
$9.99 per year for the "VIP Lite" plan, which gave subscribers access to streaming songs through the VIP Player, and 480p video (up from 360p for basic users). The "VIP" subscription option allowed uploading of up to 1,000 songs and viewing of 720p video, for $29.99 per year. And the "VIP Plus" subscription allowed uploading of up to 20,000 songs and viewing of 1080p video, for $99.99 per year
Early history: 2003-2005
The imeem service has changed drastically since its original inception as an messaging application that let people communicate by online chatOnline chat
Online chat may refer to any kind of communication over the Internet, that offers an instantaneous transmission of text-based messages from sender to receiver, hence the delay for visual access to the sent message shall not hamper the flow of communications in any of the directions...
, blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
ging, instant messaging
Instant messaging
Instant Messaging is a form of real-time direct text-based chatting communication in push mode between two or more people using personal computers or other devices, along with shared clients. The user's text is conveyed over a network, such as the Internet...
and file sharing
File sharing
File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digitally stored information, such as computer programs, multimedia , documents, or electronic books. It may be implemented through a variety of ways...
. The service was billed as a "distributed
Distributed computing
Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems. A distributed system consists of multiple autonomous computers that communicate through a computer network. The computers interact with each other in order to achieve a common goal...
, peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...
, social network
Social network
A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...
".
Founder Dalton Caldwell
Dalton Caldwell
Dalton Caldwell is a technologist and digital music entrepreneur. He is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Mixed Media Labs.-Biography:...
began working on what would become the imeem messaging application during Thanksgiving weekend in 2003. Initially, he worked on the software from his home. In 2004, imeem moved into offices in downtown Palo Alto's 285 Hamilton building, with Caldwell, Jannink and a small team of engineers continuing work on the software.
The company first unveiled its software in February 2005 at the DEMO conference
DEMO conference
The DEMO conference is a technology conference that focuses on showcasing new products from both entrepreneurs and established companies. It is held by IDG....
and formally launched it that August.
When imeem first launched, to use the service, users were required to download and install the desktop messaging and file-sharing software; the imeem Web site merely existed as a means for users to register and download the client. Though originally designed for messaging, it was the file-sharing function that took off. The client software supported the service's distributed database model: Every imeem client on the network had a database that would generate and store references to media content shared on the network; this system would accelerate access to content deemed to be close to the user. The service's media-sharing was peer-to-peer – if a user shared photos or a podcast, then the data would only exist on the client database network; users who wanted to view the actual content would access it by peering directly with the publisher.
2006
In March 2006, imeem re-launched at the South by SouthwestSouth by Southwest
South by Southwest is an Austin, Texas based company dedicated to planning conferences, trade shows, festivals and other events. Their current roster of annual events include: SXSW Music, SXSW Film, SXSW Interactive, SXSWedu, and SXSWeco and take place every spring in Austin, Texas, United States...
(SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
, with a new focus on enabling people to interact through the imeem.com website, using media (photos, videos, music) to express their personalities and interests. Timed to coincide with the re-launch, imeem introduced new features enabling users to upload and play music and video on the site.
In September 2006, imeem introduced embeddable Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
-based playlists that gave people the ability to take music and video playlists they created (or found) on the site and embed them virtually anywhere on the web. The company's players quickly became popular with consumers using MySpace and other social networks, giving them a way to customize & personalize their profiles with music.
As a result, imeem quickly gained traction, with the site's traffic growing to 10 million unique monthly users by the end of 2006. By March 2007, imeem's monthly traffic reached over 16 million unique monthly users.
2007
In February 2007, MySpaceMySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
took steps to limit the posting of imeem content on its site: any updates or comments with "imeem" even mentioned in them were removed upon posting. However, MySpace stopped blocking imeem in 2008.
In March 2007, imeem announced it was partnering with SNOCAP
SNOCAP
BackgroundThe company was founded by Shawn Fanning , Jordan Mendelson, and Ron Conway. Other SNOCAP employees included music lawyer Christian Castle, the company's first General Counsel, and Ali Aydar, the company's Chief Operating Officer, who joined imeem after its acquisition of SNOCAP in April...
, the digital rights and content management startup founded by Napster creator Shawn Fanning, to enable legal uploading, streaming and sharing of music on imeem, utilizing SNOCAP's content fingerprinting and digital registry technology. The goal was to provide a way for consumers to upload and share music with their friends, for free, and to do so in a way where label and artists can both make money and have greater control over where and how their music was available.
The partnership marked imeem's move to an ad-supported model, in which consumers could freely stream and share music and video content with the costs supported by advertising. Under this model, artists and labels are paid a share of the site's ad revenue in proportion to the popularity of their music on imeem, and have the right to register their content and determine whether that content is available on the site or through its embeddable widgets.
Ultimately, the imeem messaging and file-sharing application had proven to be something of a resource hog for power-users, since the database could grow to large proportions just by associating with a few individuals who were sharing a lot of content. This messaging product was ultimately phased out; the site became entirely Web-based beginning in June 2007. While this distributed model was interesting and received positive press, it proved to be difficult to attract many users since the only way to participate was to download the imeem client software. Over time, imeem integrated many of the client's features into its website and the innovative distributed database model was been centralized.
Throughout the first half of 2007, imeem had negotiated with the major labels to secure licenses for this new model. Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group is the third largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry, making it one of the big four record companies...
and imeem announced a licensing agreement for imeem's new Web-based service in July 2007, followed by Sony Music Entertainment
Sony Music Entertainment
Sony Music Entertainment ' is the second-largest global recorded music company of the "big four" record companies and is controlled by Sony Corporation of America, the United States subsidiary of Japan's Sony Corporation....
and EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
Music in September. In December 2007, imeem signed a licensing agreement with Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group is an American music group, the largest of the "big four" record companies by its commanding market share and its multitude of global operations...
, becoming the first online music service to partner with all four major music labels to let people legally stream and share music for free online.
2008
On January 28, 2008, imeem announced that it was acquiring the music locker service Anywhere.FM.On February 1, 2008, imeem acquired SNOCAP. It had already been making extensive use of SNOCAP's audio fingerprinting technology and music database. As part of the acquisition, SNOCAP's chief operating officer, Ali Aydar
Ali Aydar
Ali Aydar is a computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur. He is currently the chief executive officer at Sporcle.He is best known as an early employee and key technical contributor at the original Napster, the file-sharing service created by Shawn Fanning in 1999, and at SNOCAP, the digital...
(ex-Napster
Napster
Napster is an online music store and a Best Buy company. It was originally founded as a pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing Internet service that emphasized sharing audio files that were typically digitally encoded music as MP3 format files...
), joined imeem.
On March 24, 2008 imeem announced the launch of a developer's platform that will permit third-party developers to interact with imeem data.
In April 2008, imeem received a new round of funding from Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital is a Californian venture capital firm located on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California. The Wall Street Journal has called Sequoia Capital "one of the highest-caliber venture firms", and noted that it is "one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture-capital firms"...
.
In October 2008, imeem launched imeem Mobile, a free mobile music application. However, on the 22nd of that month, the company laid off 25% of its staff.
2009
The company's troubles continued into 2009, as Warner Music wrote down its entire $15 million dollar investment in imeem.It seemed possible the company could close in April 2009, but it was able to renegotiate deals with its major label partners, and subsequently found enough new investors to continue service. Sources told TechCrunch that imeem raised $6 million in this most recent funding round, with Morgenthaler Ventures and Warner Music Group among those investing.
The company launched imeem Mobile for the iPhone and iPod touch in May 2009. In June 2009, imeem Mobile crossed a milestone of over 1 million installs on the Android and iPhone platforms.
On June 25, 2009, imeem announced that it was removing all user-uploaded video and photos from the site. This move, and the lack of advance notice, was unpopular with many users.
In October 2009, imeem and Google announced the integration of links to music on imeem within Google search results; imeem was one of several online music companies involved in such efforts.
Closure
On December 8, 2009, MySpace (owned by News CorporationNews Corporation
News Corporation or News Corp. is an American multinational media conglomerate. It is the world's second-largest media conglomerate as of 2011 in terms of revenue, and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009, although the BBC remains the world's largest broadcaster...
) acquired imeem, and angered many imeem users when the new parent company closed down the beleaguered service on the same day, redirecting all imeem traffic to MySpace Music. Furthermore, MySpace social network did not pay artists or labels the money still owed to them by imeem for music streaming. The controversial closure was criticized as a sign that MySpace was out of touch with the times. MySpace, on December 22, 2009, assured imeem.com users that their playlists are safe and that they are currently duplicating every users' playlist and will migrate them on to MySpace Music as soon as possible. MySpace assured that features and functionality that users were used to at imeem would soon find their way onto MySpace, and complement the existing platform alongside free full-song streaming, artist profiles, music videos, and more. MySpace will email imeem users the instructions on how to claim their playlists.
On January 15, 2010, MySpace began allowing users to import imeem playlists. However, songs that are currently not available via MySpace Music were not converted over, and there was no means provided to even recover the names of the missing tracks. Additionally, user "favorites" metadata was not able to be carried over, with the result that users who depended upon their favorites lists instead of normal playlists were unable to retrieve their music. Other complaints include incorrect artist info, garbled tracks, and an increase in between-songs advertising.
Technology
The back-end software for imeem's services was primarily written in C#. While most of the front-end Web servers ran under Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, some used the Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
operating system. The Web site heavily used Ajax
Ajax (programming)
Ajax is a group of interrelated web development methods used on the client-side to create asynchronous web applications...
programming and Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
animation.
Audio streams were delivered as 128 kbps-quality MPEG-2 Audio Layer III (MP3) format. Video was encoded in the Sorenson Video codec
Codec
A codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream or signal. The word codec is a portmanteau of "compressor-decompressor" or, more commonly, "coder-decoder"...
at >700kbps, in the Flash Video (FLV) container format, with resolution resized to 400 pixels wide and preserving its aspect ratio, and with embedded mp3 audio at 96 kbps. While the video quality and resolution was significantly better than other video sites at that time (YouTube, for example, used 300kbps video) the late-arriving video sharing aspect of imeem was largely eclipsed by the original audio sharing component. In 2008 imeem upgraded the video quality further and became one of the first media sharing sites to offer video encoded with the MPEG 4 H.264
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 or AVC is a standard for video compression, and is currently one of the most commonly used formats for the recording, compression, and distribution of high definition video...
codec and at the original source resolution.
The original imeem client software conducted most of its network activity using an encrypted
Encryption
In cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information using an algorithm to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information...
protocol, making it difficult to monitor user activity. Thus, conversations via the client's IM functionality and group chats were encrypted and only visible to participants. On startup, the application validated with a central server. This ensured that unauthorized clients could not connect and run malicious exploits (such as for monitoring network traffic or spoofing identities) against the network. Software updates were also delivered via the client and authenticated before they were installed. The company's move to a Web-based file-sharing business model in 2007 made most of these considerations moot.
Copyright infringement lawsuit
Warner Music GroupWarner Music Group
Warner Music Group is the third largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry, making it one of the big four record companies...
announced on July 12, 2007 that it had dropped its copyright infringement lawsuit against imeem by agreeing to license its music and video content to the site for a percentage of imeem's advertising revenue. Financial details were not disclosed. Under the agreement, imeem could carry music and videos from all of the record company's artists. Warner also released financial statements indicating that it invested $15 million into imeem.
Meems (groups)
Users of imeem could link to each other through topic groups (which were originally called meems), based on common interests. Some meems were created by imeem itself, while others were user-generated. Media content could be placed in custom profile pages and topic groups, as well as in browseable content channels and charts. Meems could serve as basic online communitiesOnline community
An online community is a virtual community that exists online and whose members enable its existence through taking part in membership ritual. An online community can take the form of an information system where anyone can post content, such as a Bulletin board system or one where only a restricted...
for artists, bands, clubs, films, schools, festivals, concert tours, friends, and sports enthusiasts. A late redesign of the site replaced most of the "meem" references with the familiar word "group". Early on, it had been possible for links to be made between groups which had related subject matter, but this feature had only been implemented in the original client software. After the transition to the Web-only service model, it became impossible for users to add (or even remove) such links, although official imeem-created groups sometimes had links added at creation time, by an administrative means not available to subscribers.