On Tuesday, 8 December 2009, MySpace announced that it has completed a deal to buy off certain assets of online music service imeem, in an attempt to bolster the music offerings of the struggling social network site.
Former imeem logo, courtesy of Wikipedia
The deal was disappointingly valued at less than $1 million USD, according to someone close to the deal.
“MySpace Music and Imeem share a common vision and commitment to further enabling the socialization of content across the Web,” MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta said in a statement. “This deal will allow us to leverage Imeem’s industry leading technology and over time, meaningfully integrate their products into the MySpace Music experience.”
MySpace is owned by News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal, as well as Fox “News”.
MySpace is trying to change direction from longtime rival Facebook, by remaking itself into a destination for people to connect with friends over entertainment content, such as movies, music, and video games.
imeem was founded in 2003 by Dalton Caldwell (of VA Linux, currently Geeknet, Inc.) and Jan Jannink (fomerly of Napster), and many of the company’s core engineering team came from the original Napster file-sharing service.
In 2007, imeem became the first-ever online music site to secure licenses from all 4 U.S. major music labels to offer their music catalogues for free streaming and sharing on the web.
Sources:
Wall Street Journal – MySpace Buys Imeem Music Service
Wikpedia – imeem
