MySpace Gobbles Up Imeem…Anyone Care?
It looks like all of the ad sponsored music sites are going kaput.
MySpace has reportedly acquired Imeem for a measly $8 million. Imeem will now join iLike in the purgatory of MySpace hell.
For now, Imeem will still be run independently of MySpace, but, word on the street is that it will soon by assimilated into MySpace Music. Another rumor is that MySpace may soon be charging for music services, so, is all this gobbling up of sites like Imeem and iLike a move into that direction?
So how did it come down to this for Imeem, a site that had over 4 million users?
First off, they had some major financial issues.
They were hit with a copyright lawsuit by music publisher Orchard Enterprises. They also failed to raise some much needed funds. At one point, they were able to earn around $30 million from places like Warner Brothers, who also sued Imeem later on.
Then there’s an obvious factor. People could care less about ads when listening to music.
When you go to a music streaming site, you’re there for one thing and one thing only, to listen to music.
I’m actually kind of bummed about this whole thing. Imeem was a pretty decent site that made it pretty simple in sharing music. We used Imeem quite a bit here at Evolvor to share some tunes.
It’s also a shame that they’re forced to now be a part of the mess that is MySpace. As everyone knew from the get go, MySpace Music is really unimpressive. I don’t think that acquisition is going to help them one bit.
So, another music sharing site goes under and one less place to share your music with the world. Awesome.
