December 10, 2009 was the day that imeem disappeared from the internet. At the time, it was the only way I could (somewhat) legally listen to music on demand. Imeem was a great site. You could create playlists, listen to single tracks, and comment on songs and all sorts of things. There was, however, a question of legality because the music was uploaded by the users in most cases. Luckily I had found Grooveshark later, but it was plagued by the same problem and although it’s still around, a lot of the tracks I had favorited back then are gone, especially that Daft Punk live mix I have been trying to find forever.
Image via CrunchBase
On that day, I wrote in an old blog of mine. I called the post “The Death of Online On-Demand Streaming Music.” I think I was wrong, especially on July 14, 2011. That was the day that Spotify took over the US. I had my eye on the service for months after I learned of its existence in the UK and Europe. I had a strange feeling it would grow and eventually take over the whole world. I was half right about that I suppose. On release day I joined and had a blast. It seemed to have the selection that imeem had, and then some. And I was hoping it wouldn’t be plagued with mysteriously disappearing tracks. Up to this point, it hasn’t. It’s a solid service that’s great to listen to music on, despite the advertisements. There are several social features that I have yet to take full advantage of, and their recent additions of applications within the program make finding things more interesting. For example, when you want to go back to the good old days of classical music, there’s one called Classify that makes it easy to pick an instrument type that you want to listen to or an era or a composer. It’s really neat. It may not be all that great for the artists, but that’s a different situation in itself. (They really don’t pay out that much, even for artists who have thousands of streams.)
Oh, and on a lighter note, I found that Daft Punk song finally on YouTube. And of course, it’s on Spotify. I figured I’d share it with you, the legal way.
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