Comments on: Imeem dodges bullet with new round of funding

Social network for music fans avoids a possible shutdown by receiving new investment. Sources say financing efforts continue.

[seven7dust]

hopefully it continues on
it's one of my favorite sites after last.fm
Social Music is a great concept
I wonder why it hasn't caught on

[JimmyLite]

these are good, but i use Imeem on my G1 and its alot better then last.fm b/c with that it lags way to much. and i love using playlist.com, the only problem is that u cant find some songs but it is still better.

[themd]

Imeem it's my favorite music site, I don't even like Last.fm

[MajorSlax]

I like playlist.com better, but still, Imeem is good stuff. I hope it survives. Wait and see.

[sandonet]

Here's the thing, can ad supported music survive? I like Imeem and Pandora too but if I were advertiser I would have reservations about these sites because people play the music and never look at ads. Don't we need in-stream ads, just like terrestrial radio, for these services to survive?

[michael DuKane]

The challenge for any of these sites is monetizing the user base. At the present time, the music industry has operated with a heavy hand. In some cases, rightfully so as the proliferation of free downloads scares the pants of the labels causing a knee jerk reaction to squash any new idea. Streaming services that are exclusively ad supported will not prevail as the web is too fragmented to support the current costs for streaming when all is considered. The labels only offer licensing. They don't actually supply anything in exchange for the right to sell a digital file or to stream it. The web operator still has to source the music files, build and maintain the web servers and pay upfront fees to unions and labels before they can even begin to make a dime. The present models involve a serious investment to set up the source for the music to either stream or to sell. Imagine being a traditional record store or radio station where you had to produce the content that you wanted to sell or air. The most popular top 40 radio station of the 70s would have never survived had they had to press every album they wanted to play and pay the record labels to boot every time they played it. The only model with long term possibilities is a combination of ad support, subscription sales and download sales provided the web operator has a cost efficient source to obtain the music streams or files to sell. Under this scenario, download sales would pay for the cost of getting the music, subscription sales would pay for the cost of delivering it and ad sales would provide the profit. As it stands now, too many hands are in the pot that are providing too little in exchange. This includes not only the labels and the unions but also the consumer.

I personally like nextune.com for playlisting, streaming and digital downloads. They have a great search engine and terrific free software that creates playlists based on mood. I can work online or offline to create pretty amazing playlists.