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?

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This is a guest post from Paul Fenlon, a gifted web developer, drummer, and friend of evolvor.com. Thanks Paul for this wonderful lil’ tool that will make browsing MySpace way less frustrating in the future!

If you’re anything like me, then you probably find yourself swearing at MySpace and the designers that pollute it. For the most part, MySpace pages are cluttered and media-rich, resulting in slow load times or maybe even a browser crash.

I don’t know about you, but the only reason I’m on MySpace is to keep track of bands and find out about new music. So, when I go to MySpace I really only need to see the music player.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Brian a few months back, and with the release of his second album, A New Meaning, I figured now’s a good time to publish it!

Brian is unique in that he has self-released two albums under his alias Cyrenic – a one man band and producer. For someone without a live show to spread the word about his music, I was interested in Brain’s thoughts on creating music and using the web to distribute it.

Can you give us a little background on yourself and the Cyrenic project?

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(Photo by VeldaZ)

Gen-Y and young people coming out of college today are changing the status quo of the one-size-fits-all model of the industrial age. Young people are starting businesses, communicating online and interrupting the traditional business paths laid out by our elders.

Musicians are no exception. In fact, some might say they are pioneers. From the days of MP3.com to Napster to Myspace and Radiohead saying pay whatever the hell you want, musicians and people in love with music have lived and played by their own set of rules.

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Portishead are looking to their fans to help them promote their next album, since the trio is yet another band free from a record contract.

Member Geoff Barrow recently left a MySpace Blog entitled “The Future” and, here’s what he had to say:

“We spent the day discussing the future of the P as we are free… well free of a deal and free of commitment… for now!”

The multi-instrumentalist went on to state:

“With the world being the way it is there are lots of options open…” and he added “But if you lot have any bright ideas of how we should sell our music in the future lets us know, why not!”

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Okay fans of evolvor, here’s a quick post about getting buzz for you music that you probably don’t think is a really big deal. It’s about getting bloggers to talk about you and your music.

Now, let’s step back for a minute so you can put what I’m about to tell you in some simple perspective.

Turn back the clock to let’s say 1995. Think of the different outlets you used to discover new music. Your list should probably turn up something like this:

• Radio
• Film & TV
  (mostly MTV)
• Friends
• Live Shows/Concerts
• Magazines

It is an interesting time to be a musician. While many ask themselves, “how am I going to make money when people are just going to steal my music?”, there is an increasing number of opportunities for them to eliminate some of the marketing and distribution costs.

Actually, there’s an overwhelming number of free marketing tools online that enable artists to connect with fans. Once you break through the wall of no-brainers like MySpace and Facebook, it can be kind of intimidating with all the other networks and tools out there, especially when you run into someone like me and I geek out on you about things like Twitter.

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Radiohead have announced the winners of their “Aniboom In Rainbows” Animated Music Video Contest.

The band asked fans to create videos for tracks from last year’s historic release In Rainbows. Three winners were to be selected, but since Radiohead do things their way, they picked four. The winners will have their videos placed on MySpace.

The videos for “Reckoner” and “Weird Fishes” (which you can watch below) were put up last week. By the way, both are pretty clever and very pretty damn good. You can look for “15 Step” on November 25 and “Videotape” on November 28.

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I got a message from our good “friend” Tom the other day regarding MySpace’s new “Find Your Fans” ad service. Here is the message:

Hello Musicians!

We are happy to announce that artists can now buy ad space on MySpace. We call the program Find Your Fans. Find Your Fans On MySpace is a quicker, easier and smarter way to promote yourself, your band or your brand on MySpace.

The ad sales program is in beta, and we’re ready for MySpace users to start kicking the tires.

If you are interested in joining us, then read on….

Read more... (379 words, 1 image, estimated 1:31 mins reading time)

Okay so everybody and their mom talks about how important the 16-25 “youth” target market is when it comes to the Internet. I hear about this age group so much I wonder if anybody realizes what’s about to happen in the coming years.

If you are not aware, millions of baby boomers are beginning to retire and this will be a huge shift in regards to Internet usage as well. As more and more boomers retire, they’ll have more time to spend at home, and trust me, it won’t be watching TV. It will be surfing the ‘Net, especially for travel and retirement destinations, or business related searching (let’s just say not every boomer is going to be able to afford retirement and most will turn to the net for additional income).

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Social Networking, as a concept, has been around since the beginning of time. People gather and converse, meeting others that share similar ideas and interests. The first church was social networking. The first government. The first rock concert. On the internet, social networking, as it is often referred to, is rather new in the mainstream, but is changing how we as people gather and organize everything in our lives, from news to research to media and entertainment.

Over the past few years, three different online social networking websites have appeared on the scene that have literally changed the way the world gathers news and information:

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