The lawsuit by Warner Music Group last month evidently motivated Imeem Inc. to rethink their practices, as they launched a digital music service Wednesday that is based upon an ad model that will share revenue with the artists and music companies.
Warner Music Group (WMG) alleged that Imeem built its Internet success based upon the illegal use of free music. Imeem has a base of 16 million users and is only behind YouTube (GOOG), Google Video and News Corp. (NWS-A) in popularity as a music and video entertainment site in the United States, according to Hitwise.
This will be a good case study in how users will respond to changes in a music and video platforms. Users will only be able to view a 30-second clip of an owners material, unless permission has been given otherwise by the label or artist. Users' own songs can remain up in their entirety.
Imeem will use Snocap, started by Napster founder Shawn Fanning, to identify copyrighted material.
"It's definitely not exactly how it worked before, but at the end of the day we believe our user base cares about the site and community," said founder Dalton Caldwell in an interview. "We believe it's very much in line with the intent and spirit of the site."
I support any new ad-supported music model. The imeem/Snocap partnership is not, however, very interesting. Streaming of indie bands supported by video ads on a computer mp3 player is not new or innovative. Unfortunately, this effort is not likely to attract much (if any) advertisers.
To stay up-to-date on advertising supported music check out the Ad-Supported Music Central blog:
http://ad-supported-music.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Marc Cohen | June 21, 2007 1:10 PM | Permalink to Comment