Imeem Grabs Rolling Stones Advance Debut

"Shine A Light", the soundtrack to Martin Scorsese’s new documentary about The Rolling Stones, is making its US debut today on imeem, a week prior to it's April 1st release on Interscope. imeem users can hear the 16-song deluxe version of the soundtrack includingevery track from the film plus four bonus cuts - "Paint It Black", "Little T&A", "Shine A Light" and "I'm Free." (Hypebot)

Imeem Makes Its Own Platform Play For Music Apps. Who’s OpenSocial?

For those of you who thought OpenSocial was going to make things easy for developers who want to create social networking apps once and deploy them everywhere, think again. More splintering is occurring. Tonight, rising music social network imeem (an original member of OpenSocial) is releasing its own software development kit for programmers to create applications on imeem. Imeem is not abandoning OpenSocial, it is just that programmers will be able to build a lot cooler apps using the new imeem Media Platform. But don’t worry, support for OpenSocial is “coming soon.” (TechCrunch, PaidContent, News.com)

Free Music, Big Money

What does the music industry do now that customers won't pay for music anymore? So far, they flail. But San Francisco media social network imeem is pursuing an increasingly popular alternative: provide consumers with free, advertising-supported access to songs over the Internet. "If you monetize attention properly, it's a much bigger market because you're not monetizing consumer wallets anymore, you're monetizing brand advertisers," explains imeem Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Business Development Steve Jang. (Forbes)

Imeem Acquires Snocap

Digital music wholesaler Snocap, long searching for a buyer, is being acquired by music streaming site Imeem. The price will likely not be disclosed. The deal is just being closed this week, we hear from a source. This is the second acquisition for Imeem in as many months - in January they acquired Anywhere.FM. Imeem has raised two rounds of capital, although the size of the second round was not disclosed. Fanning, meanwhile, has largely moved on to his new startup, Rupture. (TechCrunch)

WMG Execs: 'Smaller Scale' M&A; Imeem Investment; DRM-Free MP3s

"Growth, particularly mobile, remained on a slower trajectory,” Warner Music Group chief executive Edgar Bronfman, Jr. warned analysts and investors during the earnings call for the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2007. But he also used his prepared remarks to talk big: “We continue to explore new business models that will accelerate digital growth. We are expanding our rights ... with new artists.” What was last year referred to as a revenue-share “partnership” - struck after WMG dropped a lawsuit against the social network Imeem in July - is now called an “investment”. (PaidContent)

IODA To Labels: No Deals With Imeem and LaLa

In a letter to its labels this week, digital distributor IODA recommended not granting licenses to prominent net services imeem, LaLa and others that offer full song streams due to inferior royalty structures. According to the letter, "imeem proposes to pay out a percentage of advertising revenue from its site, but will not thus far commit to a base per-stream floor rate...in contrast to the deals many of the majors received". IODA CEO Kevin Arnold said further that Lala intends to "stream full songs for free on its' site in the hope that these streams will result in sales of downloads and CDs. They have proposed a complex payment structure...that includes caps on streaming payments which would result in rates uncomfortably below the levels paid by other streaming services. (Hypebot)

Imeem, MTV Networks Pact

Music social media network Imeem is adding video from MTV Networks. The agreement allows Imeem to show clips and full episodes from such MTVN channels as Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1, CMT and others. (Billboard)