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imeem has been doing something similar for a long time - supposedly it was started by some ex-napster people and has basicly turned into napster in a browser, where people can share any music by uploading it to the site, and anyone can listen to it. Advertising is all over the plance and is used to pay the labels/artist/lawyers.

Try Imeem.com. Although it's not a radiostation, it works for me.

One for the geeks: http://www.imeem.com/people/iiS6AQH/music/I3tobUbT/lisa-miskovsky-still-alive-junkie-xl-mix/

A bigger effect on the number of users downloading has been the emergence of imeem and Myspace Music which both provide instant on demand access to almost everything ever released. imeem isn't nearly as well known as myspace, but because it allows users to upload their favorite tunes to share it has a larger selection (imeem was founded by a load of ex-napster 1.0 engineers). So between them they've essentially removed a huge number of people who would go to P2P to just find one or two songs. There are a load of other less popular music sites (last.fm, pandora etc) but myspace and imeem are vastly more popular (and legal), so they're having the biggest effect.

TMBG.

There's already sweet music here free! ;-)

All the engineers from napster went off to setup their own music sites, the most high profile children of Napster are of course Snocap, which was setup by Shawn after napster 1.0 died and later got acquired by imeem.com which was also started by napster engineers and has become the most popular web2.0 music site (over twice the users of last.fm).

There's also finetune and a few other small music projects that can trace some lineage to the original napster. Every single one of these descendants from napster are a whole lot more interesting and innovative than what the Napster brand ever did.

http://www.imeem.com/benbessman/music/C6iW1M00/barretts_privateers/

Good song.

imeem.com supports 'Near DVD Quality' in their own words, and they just use s flash player. Most people use imeem for sharing mp3s but the video quality is pretty good too.

Eerily relevant is todays EFF Article pointing out that the Free Ad-Supported music sites imeem.com and lala.com both stream unenctrypted mp3s with the blessing of the record business. Indeed it was revealed that Warner Brothers Music invested millions of dollars in both of these (although their imeem investment looks a whole lot better). There are some speed bumps to filling your iPod with the music that fans have uploaded to imeem, but it's only sufficient to keep the honest people honest.

Someone please explain the security problem. It's similar in malware of AVG, in that it drops you into a loop that prevents you from closing FireFox or even progressing elsewhere until the application is killed. Does anyone know why this happens or what the code in question has originated?

BE CAREFUL WITH THAT LINK. Nothing happens until you click the false embedded-video inside it.

A couple of weeks ago they released their 'Best Of' album for free on imeem, well technically it's ad supported, so they get some cash from this page. But essentially you can listen to the whole album online at their page on imeem, you can't actually download it, it streams via the flash player and every downloader I've tried doesn't work (even though they frequently say that they do.....)

You can see both the Video or hear just the audio over at imeem.com. Since they filter all their stuff they might actually have this up there legally.

You can see both the Video or hear just the audio over at imeem.com. Since they filter all their stuff they might actually have this up there legally.

Is it any better than imeem, which offers essentially the same service for free? The one issue with imeem is that it can be hard to navigate and find what you want - it's no iTMS.

10 cents would be a perfectly acceptable price - if imeem weren't already offering the same service for FREE.

Hardly a Last.fm ripoff. Imeem has quite a bit MORE music, as well as a much more intuitive interface.

btw this is my last.fm page: Blhack
and this is my imeem.com page: Blhack

Point being that I've been around last for quite some time....its not just a pointless slashvertisement for imeem.

Click here

Unlimited free music with links to purchase it if you want. 100% legal. 100% major labels. Tons of obscure stuff too.

imeem.com

last.fm

spiralfrog.com

deezer.com

qtrax.com

And that's even before we get to the ones of questionable legality like muxtape and projectplaylist Yet p2p sharing of music is still huge, youtube and its clones seems to have made a big difference in the amount of movie sharing via p2p, why haven't the music sites done the same?

We have flickr for sharing photos, youtube for sharing video, imeem for sharing music I should get in early and register youaroma.com

Interestingly, Metallica is on Warner Brothers records, which means that last year they were one of the first acts to be available for free on imeem.com - all the more interesting when you realise imeem's links to the old napster.

https://www.imeem.com/findfriends/?sn=1

I wager that this is the "offending" screen -- and it asks you for your Gmail password.

Dude, that site is repulsive... it's plagued by those annoying scamvertisements disguised as system windows, "You have one message, click the OK button before time runs out!"

I can't wait for ad-block to be updated to FF3b5 :'(

And last.fm was beaten to the punch by imeem.com, and imeem doesn't have that annoying 3 listen limit that last.fm does.

So now you have imeem as this monster service where you can essentially listen to any tune ever recorded, and it's all paid for by advertising.

Similarly, myspace has been in litigation with the record labels and has taken a page from the imeem playbook, copying the deal making, the business model and everything else. Only this isn't some tiny startup, this is Fox Interactive with it's massive pockets.

I really hope myspace loses this time.

I feel some small grain of sympathy for Q-Trax having to deal with the record labels, but there are quite a few free, legal services that let you listen to any music you want, on demand, they all managed to get licenses figured out. It's one things to launch with limited content, it's another to arrange a million dollar launch party before the deals have been signed.
At the time I equated the Q-Trax experience to Mr Wensleydale's cheese emporium in the famous monty python sketch.
http://snm.imeem.com/blogs/2008/01/30/oF1HiZ3f/monty_python_vs_qtrax
(slashdot won't let me post it since it ends up with too few characters per line....)

Exactly, if you can go to imeem.com and listen to any piece of music using your iPhone then suddenly the 'streaming only' limitation of imeem doesn't seem like such a restriction, which in turn means less of those all important 'buy from itunes' clicks.

"No. There aren't currently any major sites using H.264 encoded video to stream to a Flash front-end."

Sorry, completely wrong, because imeem.com has been doing this for a while now, I know because I was part of the team implementing this, feature. I pointed out the new Indiana Jones Trailer on imeem which is delivered at a resolution of 768x360 and 800kbit/sec, and when it's played full screen it looks pretty darn nice.

Well it might be bad form to blow my own horn, but you did ask - imeem.com is doing h264 video compare the indiana jones trailer on imeem versus the same video on youtube
(be sure to hit the full screen button for best effect, and make sure your flash player is a recent one).

imeem is better known as a place to upload and share mp3s, but the video support is pretty good too.

Well it might be bad form to blow my own horn, but you did ask - imeem.com is doing h264 video compare the indiana jones trailer on imeem versus the same video on youtube
(be sure to hit the full screen button for best effect, and make sure your flash player is a recent one).

imeem is better known as a place to upload and share mp3s, but the video support is pretty good too.

Immediacy: The problem is that many pirate downloads are available prior to the official release. Of course it's clear that early access to material is currently being used as a stick to pull people to media websites - I know my favourite site imeem.com has promoted the showing of at least one movie releases prior to the theatrical premier and plenty of 'exclusive' music from big name artists. The article does seem to be a little behind the times in terms of music accessibility "We'll pay Acme Digital Warehouse to serve us any musical tune in the world, when and where we want it" - right now you can get practically any piece of music for free via ad supported sites like imeem.com, deezer and last.fm. There's still room for paid services though, there are holes in these collections either content-wise or geographicly - imeem has the biggest catalog, but most of it is only in north america, last.fm and deezer have half the number of tracks, but are available in more countries, spiralfrog has the smallest catalog, but it's the only one to offer downloads.

http://www.imeem.com/ - Like youtube, but for music I guess. It has a lot of good playlists, even for my doom metal tastes.

A really good music website is http://www.thesixtyone.com/ Their selection of music is very tiny, but the UI is amazing. You can play any song without having to load a new page. When you're listening to one song, you can visit other pages and even search without the music stopping. After you get used to this UI, you'll wish youtube worked the same way.

Well, if you're looking for a replacement, I've tried out two streaming music sites recently that are pretty good:

http://www.imeem.com/ - Like youtube, but for music I guess. It has a lot of good playlists, even for my doom metal tastes.

http://www.pandora.com/ - Streaming internet radio, dissimilar to imeem in that it randomizes what it will play for you - though it tries to play music similar to what you like/tell it you like through some sort of algorithm. Good for finding new stuff. I found Electric Wizard here.

I mean there are advantages in terms of server load I'll give you that, but if you've licensed all the tunes then why not follow the imeem model and centralize everything on a website - no special p2p software needed just a flash player and a modern browser. P2P services were percieved to have some sort of limited deniability for a while because the content and sometimes the indexes did not exist on any of the developers servers, but there's no need to that here.

I mean downloading movies and tv shows via p2p is popular, but it's nothing compared to the amount of pirate movies and tv shows shared on youtube, stage6, veoh and all those other sites indexed by clones of tv-links - if you can get instant gratification most people will take the easy option. So for the same reason I see imeem.com remaining popular since you can find pretty much every record on there in cd quality, available for instant listening and of course licensed by the record labels.

Oh I see that the press release claims that they've signed on all 4 major labels, which it turns out is BS Warner Music Group hasn't signed on so users will have to do without Madonna when the site launches.

For me vinyl was always cool, but regardless of the arguments abount sound quality there's one feature that vinyl posesses for DJ's that's frequently overlooked - the user interface - the way you can control the music by dragging the record on the turntable, the way you can seek to the right point in the record just by dropping the needle in the right place - the way you can see the beats, the builds and the breakdowns on the media just by looking at the way the light reflects from the surface. That's why I still buy it, for performance purposes.

Now, there are many attempts to replicate the interface, either with the giant jog wheels on the CDJ's or vinyl control discs sending control signals to computers (Serato/MsPinky/Final Scratch) but while these bring advantages to the equation - mnamely being able to carry a larger selection in your record bag or laptop's disc - they still fall short of the pure vinyl experience in subtle ways.

Now I can listen to practically any track ever recorded, on demand and for free at sites like imeem.com when I love music I want the physical artifact and a vinyl version always gets more love from me.

Oh and vinyl is robust, I have 10 year old CD's that are turning brown and won't play, but I have 50 year old vinyl that still works just fine.

I snapped this image http://groups.imeem.com/iQrVatKB/photo/fIua32Y9X8/ with my Nikon D50 during the Aurigid shower last year and the data from this and other images was useful to Peter and his collaborators. So, take some time to snap some pictures if you're up for it, you never know it might be useful.

But all the big record labels (and a lot of small record labels) have signed deals saying it's OK to upload your ripped music to imeem.com so you can share it - just like you shared that clip from 'Top Gear' on youtube. I mean I'm sure there's no specific mention in those contracts regarding the source of the mp3/ogg/m4a/wma files that users can upload, but I'd imagine that since you can't buy mp3 downloads from many labels you only option is to either rip or download the file.

IANAL but these deals by the RIAA members sure seem to condone ripping as the most legitimate path to using imeem.

How about 'clip is static image so I can upload a piece of music to a video site' - it annoys the hell out of me to find a reference to some piece of music and to think 'oh I never knew that had a video' only to watch it and realise that the uploader just wanted to share his/her mp3. These people need to find a site which lets them upload the music directly without trying to turn it into a video file.

imeem has a deal with snocap and is using their audio fingerprinting technology to figure out who owns the copyright on all the music that users upload and who gets paid. Perhaps snocap just has to wait a few more months until imeem's growth brings in some real revenues for snocap, but even this deal makes them more attractive to potential buyers. Conspiracy theorists might raise the possibility that myspace might make a point of purchasing snocap because (a) snocap has a deal with them and (b) they could directly attack imeem.com which is diving headlong into their business by offering the artists a better deal than myspace ever has. While imeem has been paing artists who have their music shared on the site, myspace has resited allowing artists to make anything off music plays on their myspace pages. Myspace has been banning the string 'imeem.com' from their pages for most of this year, so it doesn't sound so ridiculous that they might borrow some more cash from newscorp just to inconvenience a rappidly growing competitor.

imeem has a deal with snocap and is using their audio fingerprinting technology to figure out who owns the copyright on all the music that users upload and who gets paid. Perhaps snocap just has to wait a few more months until imeem's growth brings in some real revenues for snocap, but even this deal makes them more attractive to potential buyers. Conspiracy theorists might raise the possibility that myspace might make a point of purchasing snocap because (a) snocap has a deal with them and (b) they could directly attack imeem.com which is diving headlong into their business by offering the artists a better deal than myspace ever has. While imeem has been paing artists who have their music shared on the site, myspace has resited allowing artists to make anything off music plays on their myspace pages. Myspace has been banning the string 'imeem.com' from their pages for most of this year, so it doesn't sound so ridiculous that they might borrow some more cash from newscorp just to inconvenience a rappidly growing competitor.

You can easily make the argument that the only reason imeem has managed to pull this off is due to Snocap. imeem and Snocap (founded by Napster creator Shawn Fanning) hooked up in March of 2007. After that, all of the various pending label lawsuits against imeem were eventually dropped in favor of tagging, tracking, sales and DRM in place through Snocap.

To their credit, imeem has a team of extremely hard working people that are very, very good at communicating with content owners and creators. They also managed to create an infinitely less horrendous user experience than Myspace. However, when it comes to the major labels, I think you have to take a long hard look at what Snocap provided here to see how imeem survived.

Professional Rockstars on imeem: http://professionalrockstars.imeem.com/

Now you can tell them on their imeem page http://ledzeppelin.imeem.com/

So, I went to imeem.com and clicked the link labeled "Classical" fully expecting to, you know, find some, well, classical music. Seemed a reasonable expectation to me.

Here's what I got:

http://www.imeem.com/music/ranked/classical

I guess the kids have gone and changed the definition of classical music. Back to iTunes for me. Clicking on classical in iTunes brings up a page of Beethoven and stuff. Pretty old fashioned, I suppose. I guess I'm just an old fogey.

"It'll be low quality" - No - both sites deliver CD quality audio

"It'll be some crappy indie bands that nobody has heard of" - No both sites have signed deals with most of the major labels - Sony, BMG, Warner, EMI and Universal - this is on top of all the indie labels who sign on

"It'll be only a few free tracks - everythign else witll cost" - nope it's all free with a few exceptions (like the beatles) imeem even played host to the first legal Led Zeppelin video on the internet

"It won't be on demand - you won't be able to control what you listen to" - nope it's entirely on demand, I think the only restriction I see is the slow downloads from spiralfrog that force you to watch advertising

"It'll have tonnes of spyware/DRM/evil" - well no spyware as far as I can tell, imeem.com is streaming only and provides everything via a neat little flash player that works on any flash enabled browser. Spiralfrog however uses and active X control and windows DRM, so that's Windows/IE only

OK so why is this a bolder move than this story? Well TV shows primary channel is still considered to be broadcast, a TV show has to make money on its TV run otherwise it's not considered viable. However, music revenue has primarily been generated through sales of the media, radio broadcast earns the record labels nothing, in fact it may be costing them to get this free advertising.

In my mind the celestial jukebox that's offered by imeem is a hugely radical move by the record business, imeem has become the youtube for music that the tech bloggers keep talking about - except nobody in the tech blogging world has noticed it.

EMI is also one of the companies that instead of suing imeem.com for letting people share mp3's decided it was better to cut a deal with the company and let people share their music - like a youtube for mp3's - presumably in exchange for a cut of the advertising revenue that their music is making the site. The music business is finally catching up to the changes that started a decade ago, EMI seems to be making some of the biggest moves in public.

The Bachelors Of Science - Drum n Bass from San Francisco

The Hot Toddies - Oakland Girl band who have a great song about HTML

The Eclectic Method - not really a band - VJ's from the UK who do lots of video remixes.

Ten Digit Army - Solo guitar + vocals with extra electronic goodness - awesome stuff

The Bachelors Of Science - Drum n Bass from San Francisco

The Hot Toddies - Oakland Girl band who have a great song about HTML

The Eclectic Method - not really a band - VJ's from the UK who do lots of video remixes.

Ten Digit Army - Solo guitar + vocals with extra electronic goodness - awesome stuff

The Bachelors Of Science - Drum n Bass from San Francisco

The Hot Toddies - Oakland Girl band who have a great song about HTML

The Eclectic Method - not really a band - VJ's from the UK who do lots of video remixes.

Ten Digit Army - Solo guitar + vocals with extra electronic goodness - awesome stuff

The Bachelors Of Science - Drum n Bass from San Francisco

The Hot Toddies - Oakland Girl band who have a great song about HTML

The Eclectic Method - not really a band - VJ's from the UK who do lots of video remixes.

Ten Digit Army - Solo guitar + vocals with extra electronic goodness - awesome stuff

Check out imeem.com project playlist basicly copied most of their 'ideas' from imeem with a few changes to try and avoid potential legal issues, imeem is the real deal in this case.