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MySpace Buys and Then Takes Down Imeem
Conchobair was one of several users letting us know that Myspace has snapped up free music streaming site imeem. Visitors to the imeem site are being sent to a MySpace redirect page, which states that they are "working to migrate your imeem playlist to MySpace Music." Currently there is no way to access imeem music or playlists or to make use of imeem apps on Android or iPhone. The AP reports that the deal was done for less than $1M — not bad for 16M subscribers — noting that the music startup was running out of cash. PC Mag notes: "Last week it was announced that Apple had purchased Lala, and now MySpace snaps up imeem. Are Pandora and Rhapsody next?"
The combination of crappy layouts, shoddy design, counter-intuitive interface, and juvenile audience are all working together to render Myspace irrelevant. I just checked my myspace page, apparently for the first time since May of this year.
Nothing's changed...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
You'd be surprised. I know a few people that use Pandora constantly, even though they have their own large mp3 collections. A couple of others I know that uses streaming music do it because they're not computer literate enough to rip their cd's to mp3 and set everything up properly.
I work behind a firewall and I can't install or upload music files. This was my wonderful go to on a shitty day of work, that I could listen to anything from Nirvana to Ennio Morricone, from NWA to Neil Young.. for the love of god someone, do you have something that is just as good?
Really. Does the name not mean anything??? :)
Business charges $0 for its product, runs out of cash due to lack of viable revenue. Details at 11.
Unless you're Google and can sell tons of ads, "free" is not going to survive.
Unless there's another Rhapsody in the world of online music, it's already owned and operated by RealNetworks. Am I missing something, is Real finally en route to a long-overdue end, are they looking to sell Rhapsody, or is the summary just including pointless BS as usual?
I actually tried Rhapsody for a while... it's not bad as a subscriber, but for free online music I'll stick with Pandora, thanks.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
I hate listening to the radio, so for awhile I tended to miss out on most new stuff. A couple of times, my absolute favorite bands released a cd without me even knowing because I wasn't paying attention.
Pandora fixed everything I hate about normal radio. Now I enter in all my stuff, and still get recommendations on new music. If I don't like a new song, I just skip it. Pandora has introduced me to many new bands which I love.
And yes, I have a massive cd collection, all ripped to mp3 and carried on my iPhone, so streaming does make sense for people with a large collection.
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I'm not about to let some external party control what I listen to or when I listen to it.
Pfft. Its not about control. Its music as a service.
Streaming music replaces and improves on radio, not your private collection. I have an extensive mp3 collection but enjoy my last.fm subscription when I want something to listen to I haven't heard before. Being able to listen to personalised streams from anywhere with a connection has come in handy many times too.
Hipster fight!
By "massive CD collection" he means "Laserdisc collection".
This site was great for trying out artists after a Pandora suggestion. Guess I'll have to go back to torrents for trying out new artists.
I have the 32gig iPhone 3gs. Currently there are over 5400 songs on it, spanning 15 solid days of music. Maybe it's not "massive" in your eyes, but it's enough to keep me entertained.
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Someone just posted the following to another thread of mine: "I moderated in the myspace thread, so i cant comment there, and you don't have your email listed, but 5400 songs is what i had after a two years of dialup on napster/audiogalaxy back in my high school days. i think 30 gigs for a "serious" music collection is pretty small given all things considered." I think we've gotten to a point where quality takes a back seat to quantity in these mp3 hoarding days. Honestly, I can't say for certain that I really love every single one of the 5400 songs on my iPhone. I could probably stand to delete quite a few, and I'm sure anyone who claims 30 gigs isn't a sizable music collection probably has tons of stuff they could easily delete without missing.
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I had already dropped imeem in favor of Slacker.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
They've tried. It's called the lameness filter. Basically, it ends up banning people from posting example code while the trolls have their 100% alphanumeric ASCII art of goatse.
So no, the filtering doesn't work very well.
Do your friends need reminds about when to breathe? Seriously, you need either smarter friends, or you need to set them up with a different computer.
Insert CD. iTunes opens. Asks if you want to rip this. Click yes. Plug in your iPod. Click the button that says 'yes, sync this ipod with this computer'.
I assume Windows offers similarly easy functionality these days, even without iTunes. C'mon, we aren't talking about the days of looking up command line switches to Lame.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Let's say an average song is 3 minutes, and you're using a bit rate of 192 kbps. That's about 4.2 MB per file, which means you can fit about 7800 songs on a 32 GB iPhone. With an average of 15 songs per album, that's 520 albums. Sure you need some space for other stuff as well, but it's still safe to say you can carry about 450 albums around.
So I wonder... is this the sort of amount that's "a trivial CD collection" to you? I know I don't have that many albums, and I think of myself as a music lover.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
I've been using my new Android phone for all manner of streaming audio in the car, and really enjoying the hell out of it. But I can't say that I miss imeem.
Kid-proof tablet..
The problem with a business like Pandora struggling is not it couldn't make it's model work originally, but the fact that new regulations were put in place to stop it from working.
In the US, we actually tried to create regulations to prevent music publishers from paying radio stations to play their songs for free to listeners. The funny thing is that they find ways to skirt these rules and pay the radio stations anyway.
On the other hand, they trying to stop internet radio at all stops and squeeze them harder for royalties than what even traditional radio broadcasters had to pay per audience member. (At least that's how it was looking the last time I checked, unless this was changed!).
The industry is losing relevance, attacking it's customers, it's promoters, takes their products that have diminished demand and then make them even less appealing by putting in even more restrictions, hijacking not just our media but our media playing devices, and then they have the audacity to start blaming everyone but themselves for losing market share.
They are so out of touch...
Let's say an average song is 3 minutes, and you're using a bit rate of 192 kbps. That's about 4.2 MB per file, which means you can fit about 7800 songs on a 32 GB iPhone. With an average of 15 songs per album, that's 520 albums. Sure you need some space for other stuff as well, but it's still safe to say you can carry about 450 albums around.
Now consider that albums sell from $10 to $25 dollars a piece.
450 albums is worth $4,500 to $11,250.
That's not trivial to most people.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Clearly MySpace+Imeem doesn't form a monopoly in the area, so I can see why there'd be no reason to block the purchase. But don't companies that purchase their competitors have to at least pretend to be doing it for some reason other than simply to shut down and thereby get rid of a competitor? If the sole reason for buying a competitor is to get rid of them, isn't that roughly equivalent to paying them to leave a particular market, which would be illegal?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I'm not sure I understand, what made you decide to turn this thread into some absurd superiority battle over who has more music? My initial post was trying to explain to someone else why streaming still makes sense in this day and age, and you turned it into a dick measuring contest. Go troll someone else.
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Hardly. My taste in music is about as square and mainstream as it gets.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Try 80GB of "legal" music. In ~80GB (could be larger by now) I have ~4 months of never hearing the same song twice, unless you use "random" and then you hear the same song multiple times in a day.
Of course I am nowhere near "normal", I have a 1TB (SI) drive that is 91% full of ONLY anime in Japanese with English subtitles. I am also building a 6TB RAID6 network storage server.
Again, I was never trying to claim that I was the king of having digital music, nor that I have more than any other Slashdotter ever. I was saying that streaming digital music still makes sense for someone who has all the music they already want at their disposal.
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imeem was kind of cool.
Of course, no more. I'm sure "Tom" will put an end to that.
How the hell is doing something for 20 years trivial by any human standard?
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
You seem to have the wrong idea about how these services work. It's not YOUR music stored in the cloud. Its just a internet radio station.
Maybe this revision to the original statement will illustrate my point. "In this day and age, who the hell would even need/want to stream video? I'm glad I have all of my video on my hard drive." - It's non-nonsensical. It does not make sense.
As an Imeem user you have not "lost" anything except access to a cool service. Shit happens, but not to worry - there are other suppliers
I tend to buy music on eBay. I find tons of cds still wrapped in their original cellophane, but with a slightly cracked case that keeps them from being sold in stores. I buy the cds (usually under $5) and then replace the jewel cases with ones I buy in bulk. Much cheaper that way, I still get a disk that is in perfect condition that I can rip to my own specifications, and no stealing online.
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For some reason many / most(?) of interesting new music bands choose to use Myspace as their homesite.
And where else will the bands (or their marketing managers) find such a large collection of malleable young airheads, all eager to be commanded what to think, what to buy, what to talk about, and what to do, so they'll appear all grown up and cool?
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Ripping CDs, a collection I've been building since 1985.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I'll judge my numbers from 2000, as I haven't bothered to look closely since then. At the time, I had roughly 500 CDs amassed over 15 years which works out to 34 per year, far less than one per week. Average price was probably about $15, so $7500 spent, again, over the course of more than a decade. This ignores the gifts from family and friends.
It ain't that hard.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
When you're old enough to drink, we'll tell you.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
No, you just claimed your collection is massive. We are trying to disabuse you of that notion.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Well thanks for playing the game, but getting snarky because you disagree with the adjective I chose to describe my music collection is a little over the top. Lets just agree to end it?
By the way, did you register a username? I'm obviously NoPantsJim...
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So the crux of the matter is that you are young enough to have a different perspective.
Looking through the thread, it seems that you were not yet in elementary school when I got my first CD. That gives me an extra ten years. So, ten years from now, if you maintain an interest in music, look back on the size of your collection today, and you'll see that it isn't much.
I look at my father, who has been collecting vinyl since somewhere in the mid 60's (I don't count 45's from before that). If 500 albums seems like a lot, I can only imagine that you'd faint at what he's amassed over 50 years.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I don't get relieved for work for another 20 minutes, but I grow weary of this, so I'm about done with the trolling
I hadn't registered yet, but probably will next week (I don't browse slashdot from home, and I'll forget about it until then).
My only complaint is that it doesn't seem to grab movies from a wind enough range of years. I need to look and see if there is more info in the 'about' page, but I suspect some of the things that tend to annoy me are either design choices that are valid, expressing preferences that don't matter in an objective way and/or the source material forces certain choices.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Does classical music still land you in a hipster fight?
Try 80GB of "legal" music
I have 120GB (or so) of music, about 12GB of it is legal (~100 CDs, which is 1-4 per month bought since my first job).
It swelled my e-penis, but it got to the point where I realised I was choosing to listen to the same things all the time as I couldn't remember what I had, or whether it was any good. Using "random" meant I'd hear too much crap that I didn't really like. Using "play similar songs" (e.g. using Amarok) had a tendency to drift towards more popular artists. I've been going through and deleting albums in the last few months, so far I've removed 30GB of stuff and it's much better now :-).
I also have ~30GB in my downloads folder, which I haven't listened to yet. I don't seem to have time.
(PS Anyone suggesting I should spend more on CDs is welcome to see my collection of gig tickets.)
If you've been collecting albums for over 25 years, then it makes sense you have a lot of them. But that doesn't mean that a few hundred albums is suddenly "trivial", because you don't know the age of the guy you're saying it to. That fact that you are over 40, doesn't mean everyone is.
Don't project your standards on others.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
450 albums is worth $4,500 to $11,250
450 albums cost $4,500 to $11,250 new; just try and resell them you will find out what they are worth and I can tell you its going to be less than $4,500; unless you lucked into something very rare and considered important.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
For someone who has both Jesus and John Lennon in his signature, you sure seem cynical.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
I'd say 500 is a moderate amount for a serious music fan, but a large amount for a normal person.
I have roughly 100 CDs, bought since April 2007 (2.75 years ago, when I first got a job), which works out to a CD bought... wow, every 10 days. I'm surprised, I didn't think I bought that many... (((100.0/(2.75*52))**-1)*7?)
A friend of mine is only a year older than me, and has over 1000 CDs. Another had twice that many when I was 18, he probably has 5000 by now. Most people I know with a serious interest in music probably have 50-200.
anyone who claims 30 gigs isn't a sizable music collection probably has tons of stuff they could easily delete without missing.
Music lovers tend to collect complete albums, and wouldn't want to delete odd songs.
Yeah, thanks for playing, dickwad.
Takes about 10 minutes per CD. Streaming is instant. Streaming wins.
So, ten years from now, if you maintain an interest in music, look back on the size of your collection today, and you'll see that it isn't much.
No, in 10 years, 500 albums is still a lot for someone who hasn't been collecting as long as you have.
You are correct in saying that the size of a collection can be called small or large relatively to the time someone has been collecting. This automatically means that if you don't know how long someone has been collecting, you cannot make any judgement on how large or small someones collection is to them.
So don't critize someone for saying his collection is huge, because it is not huge for you. It could very well be huge for him.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Also, please don't criticize me for misspelling criticize.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
In this day and age, who the hell would even need/want to stream music?
Lots of people.
I'm not about to let some external party control what I listen to or when I listen to it.
Then use spotify or pandora and stream what you want, when you want.
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
I have a Zune, you insensitive clod!!!
I hate listening to the radio, so for awhile I tended to miss out on most new stuff. A couple of times, my absolute favorite bands released a cd without me even knowing because I wasn't paying attention.
Isn't this what RSS is for?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I suppose that's a valid point, however it wouldn't be very effective for learning about new bands the way I have with Pandora.
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Pandora is what gets me to stream. While I have many means of finding new bands/musicians to listen to, I have also found some I hadn't come across before Pandora. And sure, I have a pretty nice music collection, but every once in a while, I want to listen to something that I *don't* have on hand. And Pandora is great at that, also, and also gives me that perfect chance to start searching for and checking out some new bands. I also much prefer to stream a few songs of a band, then go from there, than to just download their latest or greatest or entire discography. Streaming's just a faster means of getting to it, and if I'm cool with listening to other stuff alongside it, why not?
A lot of people, like me, work in a place where you cant bring in mp3/Cd players. So internet radio is all we have.
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
There's a huge benifit to streaming if you don't actually want to pay for the music you are testing out. I find my music through blogs and podcasts. I then tend to take the songs I like on there, and head to Lala, which allows me to listen to the full cd once (streaming). If I like the CD, I'll buy it. If I'm not sure, I usually end up on the band's myspace page, or any other page where I can listen to the songs more than once to decide. If I had to buy and rip a cd every time I found a single I liked, I'd be broke.
So what? Maybe you have the time and inclination to rip hundreds of CDs but some people don't. Why bother when there is a reliable network connection and sites willing to stream the same music, *and* introduce you to new things you haven't heard yet, *and* indulge any particular urge you have to listen to something you don't own.
I *have* a massive CD collection ... It would not fit on the iPhone (if I had one) ... a 10th of it would not fit on an iPhone (max is 32 GB minus space for other things)
Most of the bands I like and actually bother buying are not played on the radio (or at least not on any stations I can regularly get where I am) they often release a new CD without any radio station paying any attention .....
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Aw 80GB... that's so cute. (pets head)
Let me know when you catch up to my 250 GB of legal music (not counting FLAC). And I'm sure there's plenty of people that would think my 3.5TB of media is quaint. But how about we put away our E-peens and focus on the topic at hand.
You know what this reminds me of?
"My cock is much bigger than yours! My cock can walk right out through the door."
Or their website does.
The morons who hack it together (I don't want to use the word design) can't figure out they are supposed to serve pages up in the language the http header ASK FOR - instead the idiots just look at the IP and make a choice based on that.
("Oh but you can make an account and" - NO, I don't want to nor should i have to to make an account to get to a useable language (and how the heck would be able to register if they serve the page up in some weird language)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Wow, you still buy CDs?
It's non-nonsensical
You're right - it isn't nonsensical.
There's a place for both ways, but I still think streaming is done not because it's better, simply because there's often no legal choice at that level of cost. Certainly I've had the experience of paying for my "video streaming" service, only to have the TV series cut off half way through: when Virgin Media and Sky had a petty fight a few years ago, and VM decided to cut the Sky channels because they couldn't afford the 3p a day (was I as a customer even offered if I wanted to pay that 3p a day? Nope. Did I get a 3p a day reduction in my bill? Nope.)
TV is okay for background noise or when you just want something to randomly watch, but it's not something to rely on to watch a series.
I just can't stand n_ggers...worst kind of person to have to deal with, I swear...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
How are they screwed? Any of them can choose to use one of the many other streaming sites available (Pandora, Last.fm, etc.) regardless of what happens with Imeem. Plus I'm sure all of them have their own Album/CD/MP3 collection that they can listen to should their Internet access be lost for some reason. Using a streaming music service doesn't take away from the ability to have your own music collection.
My workplace has blocked all audio streaming services, as they were using up too much of the company network's bandwidth. At home, I have 80GB of mp3s, enough to play for 40 days without any repeats. Of what use are audio streaming services to me?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Yes. And vinyl.
tagno25 + gmhowell = 2
"we" = plural
plural >= 2
Q.E.D.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
I have hundreds of gigs of MP3s, most of which is meticulously organized. I don't think I've listened to an MP3 in months. I listen to Pandora all the time, and even in the car (jesus phone) when I'm around town because all the bridges/overpasses/trees can make Sirius skip/break up momentarily. I've been a member of Pandora for at least 5 or 6 years and it still manages to find me new music I haven't heard of and I end up loving the music it recommends. The only thing that irks me is the (somewhat) new 40 hr/month limit.
Nobody invented MP3 players in your area?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Just from interest... When I buy things online I'm always (possibly unduly) worried about receiving stolen goods and promoting petty crime. When I see an ad for shrinkwrapped goods I assume the seller nicked them from the store where they work. My experience of record stores is that they would do as you; replace the 3c plastic case and carry on.
I don't mean to sound accusatory, just wondering if other people think the same way I do.
In other news, isn't it funny how many people lose the charger for their iPod/PSP then try and sell them online?
.evom ton seod gis eht
It's a valid concern, but most of the people I've bought cds from specialize in this sort of thing, ie buying up albums that couldn't be sold in store for one reason or another and then reselling at a profit. All of them had feedback scores high enough that it seems implausible that they could be stealing everything they sell and still managing to get away with it.
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Didn't you hear? Indie has become too trendy, mainstream is the new hipster music.
Yeah, I figured that out last night. It was great; if I wanted to hear a song I'd just go to Imeem and type it in. It played the music I wanted, not the music it thinks I wanted.
At least Myspace seems to have full songs, but their interface is shit.
Oh well, back to Gnutella I guess... which is a shame. I didn't want to screw around with a website in order to hear a song - Imeem let me just play it. I bought so much music because I'd been listening to the song for a few days, and it was easier to buy it than rip it from the client.
They made it easier than pirating, but oh well.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
I remember when all imeem did was stream music. Then they added all those stupid social networking and profile modifications to make it more like Myspace. Everyone was complaining that it was turning into Myspace. Then surprise, surprise, they literally turn into Myspace. Who didn't see this coming? Maybe if they'd have spent some development time on making their site stable instead of making it cute and adding stupid features, they wouldn't have ended this way. I guarantee Myspace isn't going to revive it in any remotely similar form. They're just going to reroute playlists to to the bands' pages and that's it.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
How many music streaming services as big as Imeem have died? Are you still able to access streaming music?
How many hard drives full of music have crashed and burned? Are they still able to access their files?
Using this freakish edge case doesn't prove your point either way.
Now go ahead and call me a dumbass and repeat the exact point you've already stated twice. We're waiting.
Second that. Imeem was the shizzle.
128kbit a lot of bandwidth? In Africa maybe.