Music Ally

We’ve gotten used to artists debuting new albums on sites like Imeem a week or so before their official release, in online listening parties. But Kanye West has taken the idea a step further, by releasing a new remix compilation on the site.

It’s called Sky High, and is a mixture of old Kanye songs and newer tracks, all remixed by DJ Benzi and Plain Pat (we’ve not made those names up). The album will also be streaming on hip-hop blogs later this week, apparently.

It’s an interesting promotional tactic - remix albums used to come out around the end of a campaign around an artist’s album, but for West it’s serving as a warm-up for his new platter. If we still call them platters. Anyway, it’s an interesting move - get it here.

The first handset running Google’s Android operating system went on sale in the US yesterday. The T-Mobile G1 didn’t quite see iPhone-esque queues around the block by most accounts, but it’s still created plenty of buzz.

Several music-related apps have been released on its Android Market store already, including Imeem, Shazam and MySpace. Review site AppVee Android Apps has posted video walkthroughs - the Imeem one is above, and the Shazam and MySpace ones are below. See what you think.

Shazam

MySpace

Until recently, mobile wasn’t really an option for any website offering streaming music. Mobile browsers fall over at the first sight of Flash, for example, and even the Safari browser on Apple’s iPhone doesn’t support it. Bad luck if you’re one of the mushrooming number of streaming music sites.

One answer is to make a mobile application, as Imeem has announced this week for Google’s Android platform, and Last.fm and Pandora have launched for iPhone. But even MySpace still doesn’t offer its streaming music features in its mobile applications, focusing instead on the less-taxing social networking elements.

I met a company called Skyfire today at the Symbian Smartphone Show in London who have a mobile browser that CAN access these sites.

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As a quick extra to our coverage of Warner Music Group’s latest quarterly results last week, the company’s official filing has put a number to its investments in music websites Imeem and Lala. WMG invested $15 (more…)

Music 2.0 site Imeem has been in with U2 for a while now, with its latest deal being to stream the new remastered versions of Boy, October and War for free via U2’s profile on its site. The albums aren’t due out until next week, so it’s an early exclusive - and more sign of Imeem’s strategy to build an audience via such deals (others it’s worked with in this way include Radiohead, New Order and the Rolling Stones).

Imeem has overtaken Yahoo Music to become the top streaming music site in the US, according to figures published by Compete. Imeem attracted 10.27 million unique visitors in March up 58% year-on-year compared to Yahoo’s 9.66 million (down 14% in the same period).  (more…)

Music widgets provider Snocap has been on its uppers for a while now, but it’s finally been put out of its misery, with music social network Imeem buying it for a rumoured price of less than $5 million. If that figure’s correct, it’s something of a bargain for Imeem, given the more than $25 million of investment that (more…)