The Social

An executive from social-music site Imeem told CNET News just days ago that the company would not be going through a round of layoffs.

Well, not quite.

Imeem's vice president of marketing, Matt Graves, said the question was actually "whether we had done layoffs, not whether we were going to," and that he answered accordingly. Sneaky! He proceeded to confirm a report from PaidContent that a quarter of the company has been laid off.

"There's not as much money floating around the market, and we had to cut our costs to accommodate," Graves said. He added that the layoffs are companywide--"finance, marketing, communications, product, technical operations"--clarifying the PaidContent assertion that the layoffs had been primarily "on the technical back-end side."

He would not comment on the other half of PaidContent's report--that Imeem is planning to shop itself to prospective buyers. PaidContent's Rafat Ali added that Imeem's projected valuation is more than $200 million, a figure that many media and technology companies might not be willing to fork over at this point.

Imeem has taken venture funding from Sequoia Capital, a firm that has advocated extreme caution and frugality amid financial panic. Another Sequoia-backed company, Jive Software, cut a third of its employees within days of the now-famous letter from the venture firm to its portfolio CEOs.

This post was updated at 12:23 p.m. PDT with comment from Imeem.

Music service Imeem has released its first mobile application--and it's not for the iPhone. The application is designed for Google's Android operating system, first launching on T-Mobile USA's G1 handset.

The free app, which will be available through the Android Market, doesn't let users stream music on-demand. But they can create customized radio stations, check out recommendations, and buy music from Amazon.com's MP3 service. Because the application is connected to PC-based Imeem accounts, users can see mobile changes they've made, such as marking an artist as a "favorite," reflected on their Web-based profile. Right now, the only revenue stream is from affiliate sales with Amazon MP3, but executives say that will change eventually.

Pick your favorites on the G1 handset's Imeem app.

(Credit: Imeem)

"It's the first time we've ever had a mobile version of Imeem, which is pretty exciting for us," Matt Graves, vice president of marketing, told CNET News. "It opens up an entirely new market for us, a new demographic, and a new market of people who may not have been exposed to Imeem before."

He said there wasn't a particular reason why Imeem chose the Android Market over Apple's App Store, currently the hot spot for mobile applications.

"I don't think it was Android over the iPhone. We are interested in reaching mobile consumers," Graves said. "It seemed like a good opportunity for us and a good platform."

While Imeem has "nothing to announce just yet" about an iPhone app, Graves wouldn't rule out the possibility of developing one.

Here's the other news from Imeem: it is not jumping on the Silicon Valley layoff bandwagon, or at least that's what Graves said.

"We started being conservative before it was apparent in the market that you had to be," he explained, adding that the company will have "no layoffs."

That's good news for Imeem, considering that some other companies in the digital-music space are suffering. Cash-strapped Web radio start-up Pandora, which has blamed the royalty fees for online streaming, let go of 20 employees on Friday.

"I can't really speak to Pandora's business," Graves said, "(but) the DMCA radio rates are reasonable, I think. I think that we've got a pretty varied set of revenue streams."

Imeem, the social music site that was thriving on user-created playlists before MySpace Music turned it into an industry trend, has announced a handful of tweaks and updates that users will be seeing soon.

Among them are a slightly redesigned homepage with featured music and video clips, a "browse" page to look at top song, artist, and genre charts, a "discover" feature that recommends music based on past history (seems like everybody's doing that these days), and individual "artist" pages that aggregate all of that artist's songs into a single place.

For Imeem, which has been subject to nagging user-interface complaints, this is a way to get the site focused and organized. "After all of that activity earlier this year, we had time to take a deep breath," Imeem vice president of marketing Matt Graves said to CNET News. Indeed, in the past year the company has acquired retail service Snocap and streaming site Anywhere.fm, and completed its array of licensing deals with all four major record labels.

And what does the company think of MySpace Music, which debuted in September? "We think that the combination of playlists in music and social networking is pretty powerful, and we've been doing it for two years," Graves said. But he took a few potshots, too, most notably at the fact that some indie artists have complained that MySpace Music focuses too much on the big guys. "We think that there are some things that are important in terms of what you offer. Indie music is a big part of what we do."

Plus, he said, Imeem offers more freedom. Its playlists are embeddable all over the Web, whereas MySpace Music's are restricted to user profiles and have some limits on length. "Given something that's locked in a profile or locked in their universe, or something that you can take anywhere, we think consumers see great value in something they can take anywhere," Graves said.

Imeem is, on the other hand, still much smaller than MySpace, with 28 million users as opposed to well over 100 million. But it's growing fast, Graves added: a year ago it was at only 10 million users.

(Credit: Radiohead)

The likes of iTunes, iLike, and Imeem might be making troubled record labels' lives a bit more complicated. But on a brighter note for the music industry, they've also created digital music's ultimate publicity stunt.

A press release came out Wednesday from our sister company Last.fm, touting the fact that Radiohead's landmark album In Rainbows is now available for free streaming on the site.

In Rainbows has been out since October, and it was famously distributed across the Web with a name-your-own-price policy. So it's not exactly the freshest story, though In Rainbows is no longer available for free and had not been turned into a free stream anywhere on the Web. The band had originally opted to distribute it through its own Web site.

But these "digital release" announcements, where an artist that already has a decent fan base teams up with a digital music service, are growing more and more popular. R.E.M. debuted its most recent album, Accelerate, as an ad-supported stream on iLike in February; and in May, Imeem debuted Anywhere I Lay My Head, the album by actress Scarlett Johansson.

It's probably a win-win situation for both the site doing the promotion and for the album: the artist gets extra publicity, especially if accessing the streaming file requires joining a mailing list or signing up as a "fan," and the site gets some buzz from new visitors who may be fans of the band but haven't heard of the site. Assuming neither party paid an arm and a leg to get the promotion in place, it's a cheap way to promote an upcoming album even as the concept of "albums" grows increasingly antiquated.

AOL and Yahoo have done this for years with pre-release "listening parties" and exclusive tracks, but because sites like Last.fm and iLike use developer platform access to tap into the social-networking audiences of Facebook-MySpace-Bebo-ad-nauseam, they can reach a more distributed network of music enthusiasts. And bigger digital-music players are doing it too, with iTunes and MySpace debuts (not to mention exclusive songs) already industry mainstays.

That said, it's only a matter of time before this sort of promotion is so commonplace that it's no longer newsworthy--remember when we all wrote breathlessly about every big Web company's foray into Facebook applications?

Disclaimer: Last.fm is a part of CBS Interactive, which also publishes News.com.

Scarlett Johansson. Now on Imeem.

(Credit: Sheryl Nields/Icon International)

If you simply can't wait for Anywhere I Lay My Head, the album of Tom Waits covers as sung by sultry actress Scarlett Johansson, you're in luck. Although it isn't in full release until next week, social-media site Imeem is streaming the album live in advance.

You can't actually download it, but you can listen to the whole thing for free, and judge whether she does justice to the Waits classics or just totally botches them. As a Tom Waits fan, I'm curious to find out.

Streaming-music sites have become a hot spot for album promotions, since they offer a way for Web users to listen for free while pulling in ad revenue and simultaneously making fans wait for a (legal) physical download. Johansson is not the first artist to offer an album early on Imeem; artists like Avril Lavigne and the Rolling Stones have done the same.

Other social music sites like iLike have also been debut spots for album releases--and AOL's been doing streaming album promotions for years.

Social-media site Imeem, which focuses on ad-supported music and video playlists, announced Monday that it has acquired Snocap, the music-licensing company founded by Napster creator Shawn Fanning. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Reports of the acquisition had first surfaced in February.

The deal is all about Snocap's technology, as the company hasn't exactly been healthy recently: over half of its staff was let go last year. But the tools Snocap created, which handle digital music licensing and which power embeddable music-sale stores, appealed to Imeem, which was already using Snocap technology to identify files that users uploaded to its streaming-music service.

"The Snocap team built a great technology platform that will be useful to Imeem as we continue to grow," Imeem founder and CEO Dalton Caldwell said in a statement. "Together we'll build on that work in the coming months, and give labels and independent artists new ways to promote and sell their music through Imeem, MySpace and anywhere on the web."

Imeem acquired music start-up Anywhere.fm, which developed "smart playlist" technology, in January. The privately held company, once a lawsuit target, now has deals in place with all major music labels to stream songs online and provide artists and labels with a cut of the ad revenue.

This post was updated at 9:00 AM on Tuesday to make it clear that Imeem's platform is technically "live."

Social media service Imeem has announced the Imeem Media Platform, a set of APIs (application programming interfaces) and tools so that outside developers and partners can contribute to the site. The APIs will give developers access to media on the site (music, video, and photos), the media player interface, the music recommendation engine, and playlist-creation tools, among other things.

While the platform itself is technically "live," it's in a very preliminary phase, Imeem founder Dalton Caldwell told CNET News.com. Right now, all that's out is the documentation and tools for developers to start experimenting. "This is like step one," Caldwell said. An application directory, as well as OpenSocial compatibility, will come later.

The Imeem Media Platform, Caldwell said, was inspired in part by Winamp, the media player software that gained popularity in the Web's early days in part because it was "hackable" and welcomed developer plug-ins and extensions. (Winamp parent company Nullsoft was acquired by AOL way back in 1999.)

"The reason I was a fan (of Winamp) was because it was extensible," Caldwell said. With Imeem's new developer tools, he hopes that Imeem enthusiasts with some tech expertise will be able to make the service better, and perhaps combat complaints that Imeem's interface isn't user-friendly. "We think it'd be really great if someone built, like, a smart playlist creator so you could type in your favorite artists...and (Imeem would) create an automatic playlist for you."

Caldwell also named a few other examples: a "name that tune" or music trivia game, for example, or a way for music blogs to customize the Imeem players embedded on their sites.

While it still pales in comparison to the MySpaces and Facebooks of the world, Imeem has come a long way since the identity crisis that re-branded it from an oddball instant-messaging client to a social network in 2006. The site now claims 24 million unique visitors per month, and has streaming music deals in place with all four major record labels.

This post was updated at 6:49 a.m. Pacific time to add comment from Facebook.

Facebook may be getting closer to launching a music service that competes with Apple's iTunes, the Financial Times reported Wednesday.

Sources told the publication that Facebook has been approaching major record labels about licensing deals so that it can sell music through its Web site.

It's a long-standing rumor that has once again floated to the surface of social-media chatter.

Music sales would provide Facebook with an alternative revenue stream--the site currently relies on advertising, which many have said is precarious for a social network--and would additionally help it compete with bigger rival MySpace.com, which has a service called MySpace Music in the works and has the big-media backing of parent company News Corp. to give it an extra push in the entertainment industry. For the labels, selling music on already-popular social-networking sites is a way to tap into a youth market that has been abandoning CDs.

But it wouldn't necessarily be a good thing for companies that have built music-related applications on Facebook's developer platform. Some of them, like iLike, Imeem, and CBS Interactive's Last.fm, have ad-supported streaming or paid downloads already tied into those developer applications and it's unclear what would happen if Facebook creates an in-house competitor.

The Financial Times article suggests that like MySpace Music, the shadowy Facebook music initiative would likely offer both streaming music and downloads. "While details remain vague, record executives said that they expected a service would offer consumers free streams of music, supported by advertising, as well as the ability to pay for downloads in MP3 format, which can be played on any device," the Financial Times article stated.

The logo for the 'Music on Facebook' page. But right now, it offers artist resources for 'fan page' creation, not streaming music or downloads.

But this all might take awhile. "Facebook Music" is something that has been talked about for months and so far has borne no fruit. Back in October, AllFacebook blogger Nick O'Neill said that he was familiar with someone interviewing for the position as head of Facebook's "music division" and that the social network was already in negotiations with record labels.

But rumors of a full-out Facebook music service grew muddled with early reports about the site's "fan pages," which Facebook encourages bands and artists to create as promotional tools. A Wired blog report about Warner Bros. looking for a Facebook application developer likely dealt with the creation of fan pages and surrounding applications, not an iTunes-like music service as blogger Eliot van Buskirk speculated.

Facebook's "fan pages" launched in November as part of the company's new social advertising strategy. Since then, the company has created "Facebook Music" and "Facebook Film" hubs to promote the creation of those fan pages and offer tools to musicians and filmmakers who want to build a presence on Facebook. And at this month's South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, Facebook will be throwing parties and developer events not only at the geek-saturated South by Southwest Interactive division but also for the indie confab's music and film festivals.

Facebook representatives have stressed that the music and film pages are strictly tied to the fan pages, not any kind of upcoming commerce.

"Facebook did not launch any new music or film products in recent weeks," the company said in a statement responding to a request for comment. Facebook "created informational pages called 'Music on Facebook' and 'Film on Facebook' as guides and resources for musicians, bands and filmmakers wanting to create their own Facebook Pages. The ability for musicians, bands and filmmakers to create Facebook Pages has been available since the launch of the Facebook Pages product on Nov. 6."

The company also highlighted the fact that it does not have a partnership or formal agreement with iTunes and that any links between Facebook and iTunes are on behalf of developers who have integrated them into their third-party applications.

Clearly, Facebook wants to make a play for pop culture, but these latest rumors about big agreements with the record labels aren't much more substantial than the ones we read five months ago.

Social media site Imeem announced Monday that it has purchased Anywhere.fm, a small San Francisco start-up that has created an online music player and Web radio technology. No financial terms were disclosed.

This acquisition is clearly about the technology. Anywhere.fm, founded less than a year ago and funded by Y Combinator, has created software that allows users to upload their MP3 collections to the Web and then stream them through their browsers. This could help out Imeem in the user experience department; the service has been criticized for being somewhat difficult to use. A release from Imeem hinted that the technology will also be applied to its fledgling video-streaming features.

On the flip side, since Imeem has licensing deals with all four major record labels, the acquisition can help Anywhere.fm avert potential copyright issues.

Anywhere.fm's "smart playlist" technology, as well as a recommendation engine and features to match up users with similar music tastes, will also provide Imeem with new features that can help it compete with the likes of Last.fm. Purchased by CBS Interactive last year, Last.fm is arguably the most powerful name in social music sites; earlier this month, it launched an ad-supported streaming music initiative that pushed it further into Imeem's territory.