Music Ally

MySpace finally completed its acquisition of music service Imeem last week for a reportedly super-low sum. However, it seems that indie artists won’t be seeing a payday from the revenues they were owed from sales of their music through Snocap widgets – Snocap was bought by Imeem last year, remember.

MySpace only bought the Imeem domain name, technology and trademarks, it turns out. “MySpace Music did not acquire imeem’s outstanding debts, including the money imeem owed to artists under the Snocap relationship,” confirms a spokesperson.

Some bands are reportedly owed up to a year’s worth of revenues. Usually it’s consumers who get stiffed when a digital music service shuts down – e.g. stores that have sold DRM’d tracks. In this case, it appears to be artists who are losing out.

Previously chairman and CEO of advertising giant Universal McCann, then CEO of Spiralfrog, now founder of Rebel Digital, Robin Kent understands the economics of ad-supported media from both sides of the desk. We talked to him for a feature in the latest Music Ally Report, which subscribers can read here – while non-subscribers can sign up for a free trial.

However, we’re going to be breaking out Q&As from the feature throughout this week, for our ‘Can Music Be Free?’ focus. Starting with Robin, who we asked about everything from Spotify to major labels. Find the Q&A after the jump.

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The speculation last week about Google’s music search plans was pretty much on the money. Announced officially last night, the company’s new search features will provide streaming previews when people search for song titles or artists – or even specific lyrics. iLike and Lala are the two main partners as previously reported, although the iLike element will be branded as MySpace. However, Pandora, Imeem and Rhapsody are also on board, providing links to “music related to your queries as well” – a recommendation element, in other words. The new feature is only available in the US for now. So how does Google decide which partner to serve links up for each query? A virtual coin toss, apparently.

You’ve probably already heard that Michael Jackson has died: it’s going to be all over both mainstream and social media for some time yet. Music sites and stores have been quick to post their tributes to the star, too.

So, We7 has a tribute playlist, while Spotify’s (public) office playlist today is purely Jackson songs. Imeem also has a Jackson playlist plus tribute, while Apple has gone with a regular promo button on the iTunes Store (pictured) taking users through to his albums – complete with a past-tense artist profile.

One site that hasn’t yet been updated, however, is AEG’s own Michael Jackson Live site, promoting his planned 50-date residency at The O2 venue in London. We’ll have more on the implications of the now-cancelled gigs on the blog later today.

Streaming music service Imeem has revealed that it now has more than one million users of its mobile applications (on iPhone and Android), although it’s the Android version that the company seems most excited about.

Android listening sessions are more than twice as long as on iPhone, says CEO Dalton Caldwell, and the app is now on two out of every three Android handsets – with a third of Android users new to Imeem.

What about BlackBerry, which has been aggressively trumpeting its suitability for music apps this year? “It’s a total pain to install anything on the BlackBerry,” says Caldwell. Ouch.

Having written off its original $16 million investment in music streaming service Imeem, not to mention letting it off $4 million in royalties, you might think WMG would be steering clear from now on. Not so.

US blog All Things Digital is reporting that the label has actually taken MORE equity in Imeem, except this time it’s not stumping up any cash for it. Instead, the larger stake is “in exchange for a renegotiated licensing deal that is supposed to 1) give Imeem a better chance of being able to pay Warner for use of its music and 2) reduce the amount of cash Imeem does pay out to Warner every quarter”.

Startups have been publicly keen for labels to cut them more slack when it comes to licensing costs, but it remains to be seen whether giving up more equity as a result works out well for both parties.

Comparing online music piracy to whack-a-mole is a well-worn metaphor, but it’s never been so apt as today, with The Pirate Bay announcing its IPREDator VPN service, and SeeqPod revealing plans to sell its source code to any developer willing to stump up $5,000.

In both cases, the spur is litigation and legislation. The Pirate Bay’s co-founders are awaiting the verdict of their trial next month, but more immediately, IPREDator is anticipating new Swedish laws allowing the authorities to demand the personal details of suspected copyright infringers.

Using the new VPN theoretically means people will be far less trackable, with the bonus (if you’re The Pirate Bay) of providing a potentially lucrative new revenue stream. It looks like the IFPI will have to revise those estimates of how much The Pirate Bay is making…

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Music service Imeem has responded to a report on TechCrunch that it may shut down in the face of $30 million of licensing payments owed to labels. “TechCrunch’s $30m number is not only wrong, it’s preposterous,” says VP of marketing Matt Graves. “We don’t now owe, nor have we ever owed, that amount of money to the labels.”

However, Graves confirms Imeem wants to restructure its licensing deals. “The economy and the world have changed, and just as we’ve renegotiated our bandwidth bills, ad-serving deals, etc, to take into account the new economic realities, it makes sense to do the same with our content deals.”

Its licensing rates were negotiated back in 2007, although guesses as to how much Imeem is paying labels per stream vary from $0.004 to $0.01.

Could another major ad-supported music service be about to bite the dust? TechCrunch is reporting that Imeem may be in serious trouble after failing to raise more cash or find a buyer for the company.

A spokesperson denies that the company is about to shut down, but confirms it laid off some staff last week. One source tells the blog that Imeem owes the labels as much as $30 million in licensing fees to date, and although Imeem describes that as “extremely inaccurate”, it does confirm that more than a billion songs and videos are being streamed on the service every month.

It’s not a great time for ad-supported music services at the moment. SpiralFrog croaked last week, and Last.fm announced plans to move to a paid subscription model in all but three countries. The music industry says it’s keen to support innovative new ways to access music, yet many of the startups offering those innovations are struggling to make the numbers add up.

As part of the feature in this week’s Music Ally Report on location-based mobile services, we posed some questions to Imeem’s CMO and head of business development Steve Jang.

See his answers below – the company was one of the first mobile music services to include location-based features, in its Android app, so they’re well worth a read.

How important is location to a service like Imeem? Is it just a fun value add or is there a way in which location-finding can be part of the business model?

At imeem, we are excited about creating a powerful service that enables the user to discover new music and friends through a variety of social music streaming experiences, one of which includes location-based recommendations. Accurate information around the popularity of a song in different places has long been tough to come by as a music fan, let alone by a record label or artist, resulting in a patchwork quilt of retail, radio, top 40 shows, and poll-based stats.

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