Imeem.com, created in 2003, was a hugely successful user-generated music social network of 16 million users. You could upload your music, make a personal profile, create playlists, comment on music, and meet other users with whom you share your musical preferences. The best part was you could create custom playlists where you could listen to your selections anytime for free and even add these playlists to your personal blog.

MySpace has now acquired imeem — even the imeem.com website now redirects to MySpace Music. The process of integrating the imeem features into MySpace Music has begun. When imeem users log into MySpace they can import their imeem playlists. Unfortunately those playlists may not include all of the songs previously held. Since MySpace Music must be fully licensed, many user uploaded songs within imeem did not conform to the legal parameters of this. Plus, the new MySpace Music playlists consist of musical content only found within MySpace Music so many songs are no longer available to those playlists.

Unhappy imeem Users

Overall, imeem users are not happy. However, the truth behind the buy out of imeem is that the company was on the verge of going under anyway. Legal disputes from record companies were costing the website more money than they had. But this little fact has been kept quiet for the most part while imeem boasts their excitement of becoming part of MySpace Music. So while imeem users feel betrayed, the reality is they did not sell out to MySpace Music — they were rescued by it.

Making the Change to MySpace Music

The problem is that MySpace Music is still frustrating to navigate, unlike imeem where you could search by artist, or song, and even get song recommendations based on what you had searched. It was easy to find what you were looking for, but MySpace Music can be like sorting through an over stuffed and unorganized closet as you visit artist page by page looking for the song you want. However, the integration of imeem features into MySpace Music has improved the ability to create MySpace playlists. The playlists aren’t as great as they were on imeem but they are a step up for MySpace.

Reality Check

While MySpace probably hopes to regain popularity by “acquiring” the 16 million imeem users, the reality is that these users will most likely look elsewhere for their music fix. Sure, they will probably import their playlists and take a look around, but actually retaining their loyalty isn’t likely to happen. MySpace lost their height of power a long while back due to their unpleasant banner ads, prolific usage of the site by minors, and overall disorganization. So R.I.P. imeem, buried in the cemetery of MySpace Music.