MySpace Buys and Then Takes Down Imeem 165
Conchobair was one of several users letting us know that Myspace has snapped up free music streaming site imeem. Visitors to the imeem site are being sent to a MySpace redirect page, which states that they are "working to migrate your imeem playlist to MySpace Music." Currently there is no way to access imeem music or playlists or to make use of imeem apps on Android or iPhone. The AP reports that the deal was done for less than $1M — not bad for 16M subscribers — noting that the music startup was running out of cash. PC Mag notes: "Last week it was announced that Apple had purchased Lala, and now MySpace snaps up imeem. Are Pandora and Rhapsody next?"
Myspace is fast losing relevance (Score:5, Insightful)
The combination of crappy layouts, shoddy design, counter-intuitive interface, and juvenile audience are all working together to render Myspace irrelevant. I just checked my myspace page, apparently for the first time since May of this year.
Nothing's changed...
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MySpace sucks, and if they're smart they'll stop buying companies and work on a complete overhaul. Facebook ate their lunch and MySpace still does nothing to fight back.
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The horrible thing is that, like IM and file formats, there's a strong network effect. There's a strong incentive for everyone to use the same site, pretty much regardless of specs, functionnality, reliability...
Hopefully someone will come up with some kind of Social Web standard and filters, that will let us import/export content and contacts between sites, maybe set up front-ends on several sites but point them back to our own site...
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friendfeed.com perhaps?
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Yeah but if the companies allowed that they'd lose their customers.
The only way is for you personally to use sites other than those that you dislike or else nothing will change. Users have to move away from the sites, because if the users don't show themselves to be mobile the sites won't improve.
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I wish...
For some reason many / most(?) of interesting new music bands choose to use Myspace as their homesite.
I'm really torn; great new music (yes, there's plenty of those if you care to look around) versus crappy nature of Myspace.
Myspace = airheads only (Score:2)
For some reason many / most(?) of interesting new music bands choose to use Myspace as their homesite.
And where else will the bands (or their marketing managers) find such a large collection of malleable young airheads, all eager to be commanded what to think, what to buy, what to talk about, and what to do, so they'll appear all grown up and cool?
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Yeah, supposedly the arguments "it was better" are mostly about feeling better past primetime...
Anyway, independents (not some genre; mode of action) are most plagued by the error of choosing Myspace. Local bands (yes, even in countries where Myspace doesn't exist otherwise), real jobs, no managers, little side money from small number of CDs & concerts.
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And where else will the bands (or their marketing managers) find such a large collection of malleable young airheads, all eager to be commanded what to think, what to buy, what to talk about, and what to do, so they'll appear all grown up and cool?
Youtube.
yeah but (Score:2)
imeem was kind of cool.
Of course, no more. I'm sure "Tom" will put an end to that.
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Sounds like the geocities of this decade.
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Slashdot should employ the use of a new filter. If you are posting anonymously, your post should be rejected if it contains any racial slurs or other obvious flaming.
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Not that my vote counts for much....
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Slashdot should employ the use of a new filter. If you are posting anonymously, your post should be rejected if it contains any racial slurs or other obvious flaming.
|\|1gg3rs.
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Accidentally banning "13375p3ak" is a plus in my book.
Ever heard of the "lameness filter"? (Score:5, Insightful)
They've tried. It's called the lameness filter. Basically, it ends up banning people from posting example code while the trolls have their 100% alphanumeric ASCII art of goatse.
So no, the filtering doesn't work very well.
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Censorship you say? Not the kinda thing slashdot was built on.
No matter what a person wants to say, censoring it is not the answer... ever.
As much as I might take offense or disagree with someone it doesn't give them any less right to say what they wish.
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Slashdot should employ the use of a new filter. If you are posting anonymously, your post should be rejected if it contains any racial slurs or other obvious flaming.
Eat a dick, slutbag asshat doucheface fartsicle!
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How about not browsing at -1, and not replying to trolls? It's quite easy to do, actually. I would have never seen that post if you hadn't replied to it.
Ignore it, and it will be modded out of sight.
I'M SICK OF N_GGERS!!! (Score:2, Troll)
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But I'm from Scunthorphe, and I was merely trying to talk about my pet raccoon!
Yeah, how are we supposed to have a serious discussion about Essex when you won't stop touching my Ballston?
This Sucks (Score:2, Interesting)
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There are a ton of sites that are much better than imeem, but the one i've really started to like is grooveshark.com. lots of people like last.fm or spotify, but grooveshark lets me listen to any song ondemand, without downloading an external app, which is a must for listening to music at work.
Leave Pandora Alone! (Score:4, Funny)
Really. Does the name not mean anything??? :)
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Judging by the lack of replies, I'm guessing /. posters are not well versed in the classics.
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You're right, I thought this was somehow related to the "Leave Britney alone!" guy.
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Yet another free business going bust (Score:4, Interesting)
Business charges $0 for its product, runs out of cash due to lack of viable revenue. Details at 11.
Unless you're Google and can sell tons of ads, "free" is not going to survive.
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Business charges $0 for its product, runs out of cash due to lack of viable revenue. Details at 11.
Unless you're Google and can sell tons of ads, "free" is not going to survive.
Yes, I'm sure that none of those millions of websites that survive only by ads revenue will go down any day now, including one of my pet projects that hasn't been updated since last year and still generates over $200/month from [non-Google] ad clicks.
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That's the perks of being omnipotent, you earn cash out of thin air. But I was hoping that God* made more than $200/month in revenue from any one of his ventures.
*Parent's user ID...
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Maybe $200 a month isn't a lot when you're actually paying for content. You know, like licencing all that music. Internet ad revenue is pitiful.
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$200 isn't enough to buy a week's worth of groceries.
It is plenty, where I live you can buy a week's worth of groceries for four for ~$150.
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Same here. And a couple years ago it would buy even more, when $200 was worth more than 135.
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Your sarcasm is more accurate than you think.
Broadcast media is funny - someone else controls the content, and they control the ads. As a result, broadcasters can reasonably guarantee that an ad would be seen by a certain number of people at a certain time, and the advertisers pay a premium for that opportunity.
A service like Imeem, with its on-demand, user-controlled content/playlists, is much more dynamic, and as a result, much more difficult to get a wide audience for any particular ad. The result is t
Rhapsody? (Score:2)
Unless there's another Rhapsody in the world of online music, it's already owned and operated by RealNetworks. Am I missing something, is Real finally en route to a long-overdue end, are they looking to sell Rhapsody, or is the summary just including pointless BS as usual?
I actually tried Rhapsody for a while... it's not bad as a subscriber, but for free online music I'll stick with Pandora, thanks.
Tried by IP address (Score:1)
Sweet (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes, because MySpace buying a site and transferring it over to them is great justification to start illegally pirating music.
Is your music taste some kind of weird obscure music that's actually easier to find on torrents than on youtube or one of the 20 other music sites?
Re:Sweet (Score:4, Informative)
Too late for for me to be upset.. (Score:3, Informative)
I never liked it, anyway. (Score:2)
I've been using my new Android phone for all manner of streaming audio in the car, and really enjoying the hell out of it. But I can't say that I miss imeem.
isn't that a bit sketchy? (Score:3, Interesting)
Clearly MySpace+Imeem doesn't form a monopoly in the area, so I can see why there'd be no reason to block the purchase. But don't companies that purchase their competitors have to at least pretend to be doing it for some reason other than simply to shut down and thereby get rid of a competitor? If the sole reason for buying a competitor is to get rid of them, isn't that roughly equivalent to paying them to leave a particular market, which would be illegal?
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MySpace says they are transferring all the playlists over as well, as well as the users... So they bought them for their customer list, which is legal as far as I know.
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don't companies that purchase their competitors have to at least pretend to be doing it for some reason other than simply to shut down and thereby get rid of a competitor?
The four major labels already have abandoned any pretense of competition through their joint ventures, like MySpace Music and Vevo.
Besides, it's just independent artists. Some of this music has been around the block several times, originating from the original mp3.com and GarageBand, through iLike and iMeem.
The RIAA can do whatever they wa
myspace sucks (Score:2)
Or their website does.
The morons who hack it together (I don't want to use the word design) can't figure out they are supposed to serve pages up in the language the http header ASK FOR - instead the idiots just look at the IP and make a choice based on that.
("Oh but you can make an account and" - NO, I don't want to nor should i have to to make an account to get to a useable language (and how the heck would be able to register if they serve the page up in some weird language)
In other news (Score:2)
Amazing (Score:2)
Crap (Score:2)
Yeah, I figured that out last night. It was great; if I wanted to hear a song I'd just go to Imeem and type it in. It played the music I wanted, not the music it thinks I wanted.
At least Myspace seems to have full songs, but their interface is shit.
Oh well, back to Gnutella I guess... which is a shame. I didn't want to screw around with a website in order to hear a song - Imeem let me just play it. I bought so much music because I'd been listening to the song for a few days, and it was easier to buy it than
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Do your friends need reminds about when to breathe? Seriously, you need either smarter friends, or you need to set them up with a different computer.
Insert CD. iTunes opens. Asks if you want to rip this. Click yes. Plug in your iPod. Click the button that says 'yes, sync this ipod with this computer'.
I assume Windows offers similarly easy functionality these days, even without iTunes. C'mon, we aren't talking about the days of looking up command line switches to Lame.
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I have a Zune, you insensitive clod!!!
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So what? Maybe you have the time and inclination to rip hundreds of CDs but some people don't. Why bother when there is a reliable network connection and sites willing to stream the same music, *and* introduce you to new things you haven't heard yet, *and* indulge any particular urge you have to listen to something you don't own.
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Yes. And vinyl.
Re:who streams music? (Score:4, Interesting)
Pandora fixed everything I hate about normal radio. Now I enter in all my stuff, and still get recommendations on new music. If I don't like a new song, I just skip it. Pandora has introduced me to many new bands which I love.
And yes, I have a massive cd collection, all ripped to mp3 and carried on my iPhone, so streaming does make sense for people with a large collection.
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anyone who claims 30 gigs isn't a sizable music collection probably has tons of stuff they could easily delete without missing.
Music lovers tend to collect complete albums, and wouldn't want to delete odd songs.
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I hate listening to the radio, so for awhile I tended to miss out on most new stuff. A couple of times, my absolute favorite bands released a cd without me even knowing because I wasn't paying attention.
Isn't this what RSS is for?
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I *have* a massive CD collection ... It would not fit on the iPhone (if I had one) ... a 10th of it would not fit on an iPhone (max is 32 GB minus space for other things)
Most of the bands I like and actually bother buying are not played on the radio (or at least not on any stations I can regularly get where I am) they often release a new CD without any radio station paying any attention .....
Re:who streams music? (Score:5, Funny)
Hipster fight!
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Hardly. My taste in music is about as square and mainstream as it gets.
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Didn't you hear? Indie has become too trendy, mainstream is the new hipster music.
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Does classical music still land you in a hipster fight?
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By "massive CD collection" he means "Laserdisc collection".
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Of course I am nowhere near "normal", I have a 1TB (SI) drive that is 91% full of ONLY anime in Japanese with English subtitles. I am also building a 6TB RAID6 network storage server.
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No, you just claimed your collection is massive. We are trying to disabuse you of that notion.
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Try 80GB of "legal" music
I have 120GB (or so) of music, about 12GB of it is legal (~100 CDs, which is 1-4 per month bought since my first job).
It swelled my e-penis, but it got to the point where I realised I was choosing to listen to the same things all the time as I couldn't remember what I had, or whether it was any good. Using "random" meant I'd hear too much crap that I didn't really like. Using "play similar songs" (e.g. using Amarok) had a tendency to drift towards more popular artists. I've been going through and deleting a
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You know what this reminds me of?
"My cock is much bigger than yours! My cock can walk right out through the door."
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Aw 80GB... that's so cute. (pets head)
Let me know when you catch up to my 250 GB of legal music (not counting FLAC). And I'm sure there's plenty of people that would think my 3.5TB of media is quaint. But how about we put away our E-peens and focus on the topic at hand.
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By the way, did you register a username? I'm obviously NoPantsJim...
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I don't get relieved for work for another 20 minutes, but I grow weary of this, so I'm about done with the trolling
I hadn't registered yet, but probably will next week (I don't browse slashdot from home, and I'll forget about it until then).
My only complaint is that it doesn't seem to grab movies from a wind enough range of years. I need to look and see if there is more info in the 'about' page, but I suspect some of the things that tend to annoy me are either design choices that are valid, expressing prefe
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Ripping CDs, a collection I've been building since 1985.
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Let's say an average song is 3 minutes, and you're using a bit rate of 192 kbps. That's about 4.2 MB per file, which means you can fit about 7800 songs on a 32 GB iPhone. With an average of 15 songs per album, that's 520 albums. Sure you need some space for other stuff as well, but it's still safe to say you can carry about 450 albums around.
So I wonder... is this the sort of amount that's "a trivial CD collection" to you? I know I don't have that many albums, and I think of myself as a music lover.
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Let's say an average song is 3 minutes, and you're using a bit rate of 192 kbps. That's about 4.2 MB per file, which means you can fit about 7800 songs on a 32 GB iPhone. With an average of 15 songs per album, that's 520 albums. Sure you need some space for other stuff as well, but it's still safe to say you can carry about 450 albums around.
Now consider that albums sell from $10 to $25 dollars a piece.
450 albums is worth $4,500 to $11,250.
That's not trivial to most people.
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So the crux of the matter is that you are young enough to have a different perspective.
Looking through the thread, it seems that you were not yet in elementary school when I got my first CD. That gives me an extra ten years. So, ten years from now, if you maintain an interest in music, look back on the size of your collection today, and you'll see that it isn't much.
I look at my father, who has been collecting vinyl since somewhere in the mid 60's (I don't count 45's from before that). If 500 albums seems l
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So, ten years from now, if you maintain an interest in music, look back on the size of your collection today, and you'll see that it isn't much.
No, in 10 years, 500 albums is still a lot for someone who hasn't been collecting as long as you have.
You are correct in saying that the size of a collection can be called small or large relatively to the time someone has been collecting. This automatically means that if you don't know how long someone has been collecting, you cannot make any judgement on how large or small someones collection is to them.
So don't critize someone for saying his collection is huge, because it is not huge for you. It could ver
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Just from interest... When I buy things online I'm always (possibly unduly) worried about receiving stolen goods and promoting petty crime. When I see an ad for shrinkwrapped goods I assume the seller nicked them from the store where they work. My experience of record stores is that they would do as you; replace the 3c plastic case and carry on.
I don't mean to sound accusatory, just wondering if other people think the same way I do.
In other news, isn't it funny how many people lose the charger for their iPo
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450 albums is worth $4,500 to $11,250
450 albums cost $4,500 to $11,250 new; just try and resell them you will find out what they are worth and I can tell you its going to be less than $4,500; unless you lucked into something very rare and considered important.
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When you're old enough to drink, we'll tell you.
Re:who streams music? (Score:4, Funny)
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I'll judge my numbers from 2000, as I haven't bothered to look closely since then. At the time, I had roughly 500 CDs amassed over 15 years which works out to 34 per year, far less than one per week. Average price was probably about $15, so $7500 spent, again, over the course of more than a decade. This ignores the gifts from family and friends.
It ain't that hard.
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If you've been collecting albums for over 25 years, then it makes sense you have a lot of them. But that doesn't mean that a few hundred albums is suddenly "trivial", because you don't know the age of the guy you're saying it to. That fact that you are over 40, doesn't mean everyone is.
Don't project your standards on others.
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I'd say 500 is a moderate amount for a serious music fan, but a large amount for a normal person.
I have roughly 100 CDs, bought since April 2007 (2.75 years ago, when I first got a job), which works out to a CD bought... wow, every 10 days. I'm surprised, I didn't think I bought that many... (((100.0/(2.75*52))**-1)*7?)
A friend of mine is only a year older than me, and has over 1000 CDs. Another had twice that many when I was 18, he probably has 5000 by now. Most people I know with a serious interest in mus
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I'm not about to let some external party control what I listen to or when I listen to it.
Pfft. Its not about control. Its music as a service.
Streaming music replaces and improves on radio, not your private collection. I have an extensive mp3 collection but enjoy my last.fm subscription when I want something to listen to I haven't heard before. Being able to listen to personalised streams from anywhere with a connection has come in handy many times too.
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You seem to have the wrong idea about how these services work. It's not YOUR music stored in the cloud. Its just a internet radio station.
Maybe this revision to the original statement will illustrate my point. "In this day and age, who the hell would even need/want to stream video? I'm glad I have all of my video on my hard drive." - It's non-nonsensical. It does not make sense.
As an Imeem user you have not "lost" anything except access to a cool service. Shit happens, but not to worry - there are other su
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