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imeem opening own music store
Friday, July 3, 2009 @ 12:20pm

imeem is gradually building its own music store that may afford it independence from Apple's iTunes or Amazon MP3, an investigation has found. Normally, those buying permanent copies of music from the site must go through an Amazon or iTunes link and buy it off-site; quietly, however, the company has been adding direct-download MP3 purchases of its own for certain artists, such as Iron and Wine. The payment system is direct and uses either credit cards or PayPal.

The move is explained by TechCrunch as the result of a bid to improve imeem's initially struggling financial performance by negotiating download rights with labels and receiving larger cut of each download. Under the dominant existing system, it only gets the 5 percent affiliate revenue that comes from buying at a third-party store and consequently leans more heavily on the revenues from ads displayed on each page. Switching to a classic direct model gives it as much as 30 percent of every download without having to adjust prices or lose existing customers.

Expanding in this way creates a form of end run around Apple. Like Last.fm or Pandora, imeem runs its own Internet radio app for the iPhone but is unique for selling its own content on the desktop, letting users listen to the same tracks on either platform. Nonetheless, it's unlikely that imeem will completely abandon its iTunes connection. as Apple's current iPhone SDK rules prohibit apps from writing directly to a device's music library and would limit any permitted downloads to just the imeem app itself.

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  • Reader reaction
    Found 1 comments

    Imeem = Fail

    259198

    How in the world does Imeem expect to beat iTunes or Amazon (or even Walmart) for music downloads?

    There is no benefit to the Imeem members if they can get the same service already from iTunes (even if you aren't on a Mac).

    The recent deletion of user-generated photos and videos did nothing, but anger the loyal paying and non-paying members who spent time making Imeem the search-engine-success story it is. Mix that member anger with the multi-million dollar write off by Warner of its investment in Imeem and the Imeem layoffs in the past 12 months, it is clear that the company is searching for anything it can to stay out of bankruptcy.

    It just doesn't make sense to try and do so by competing against iTunes or Amazon that have built-in market share due to existing product lines. The Imeem spin doctors will tell you all is healthy, but look for Imeem to join the growing list of failed music social network sites because it is dumping the word "social" for "sales".

    - Disappointed Imeem VIP member

    Comment posted by: maohuanhuan
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