Tech News: Imeem Overtakes Yahoo at U.S. Top Music-Streaming Site

[Mumbo Sauce]

Imeem Unseats Yahoo: Top U.S. Music-Streaming Site
Imeem has taken over Yahoo's throne by becoming the No. 1 streaming music site in the United States.

Yahoo, which had acquired large music sites like Broadcast, Launch Media and Musicmatch in order to become the top-ranked music-streaming site in the country, has slipped into second place behind imeem in Compete's list of the top 20 U.S. streaming music sites for March.

Imeem's expensive label deals, which allow it to offer on-demand music from all four majors, plus indies -- combined with emphases on social networking and reaching out to blogs -- have paid off handsomely. The site's unique U.S. visitor count rose 58 percent over the previous March to 10.3 million.

Compete called the streaming sector "the largest category in online music in March, 2008," and says its data shows "the most popular options for listening to music online are free."

Here's a quick summary of how imeem and the other newcomers clambered up the chart as Yahoo slipped to second:

SeeqPod and ReverbNation launched in 2006, while Pandora added social features and the original MP3.com catalog showed up on iLike.

In 2007, MOG realized that YouTube had the rights to stream all sorts of music legally and that, as a result, one of the best ways to offer a music service was to mash YouTube through music filters. Meanwhile, Yahoo infuriated Musicmatch users by upgrading them to Yahoo Music Engine, which they didn't want, causing us to wonder why they bothered paying $160 million for Musicmatch in the first place.

View complete article here:
http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/05/imeem-unseats-y.html

By Eliot Van Buskirk