imeem Mobile for iPhone hit the App Store Wednesday, and I had a chance to take the app for a spin just as it was launching. imeem specializes in music streaming, and though it's not the first iPhone app to stream music, it certainly has a lot to offer.
The interface is simple, with just four buttons across the bottom of the screen: Featured Artists, MyMusic, Favorites, and Search.
Featured Artists is where imeem spotlights artists and songs for the general community. There's a Top 100 songs playlist, a playlist of recommended songs, and themed playlists (appropriately, the first one is “Songs from Apple Ads").
The MyMusic button takes you to your online music archive, which you can upload using the imeem Uploader client on your PC or Mac. imeem hypes this as being a storage saver for mobile devices--upload your music collection and stream it instead of storing it on your phone!--but that'll cost you. The free version of MyMusic only stores 100 songs (hardly worth the trouble), and it'll cost you $30 or $100 a year for access to a collection of up to 1,000 or 20,000 songs, respectively. That seems a bit steep.
If you're an imeem fan, you'll be glad to know that your imeem profile carries over to the app; your favorite artist stations are all there for you to stream by pressing the Favorites button. As with Pandora, these stations are built around you favorite artists and feature similar music, which you can rate or buy from iTunes as you listen. As you rate music, the stations further tune themselves to your tastes.
The interface is simple, with just four buttons across the bottom of the screen: Featured Artists, MyMusic, Favorites, and Search.
Featured Artists is where imeem spotlights artists and songs for the general community. There's a Top 100 songs playlist, a playlist of recommended songs, and themed playlists (appropriately, the first one is “Songs from Apple Ads").
The MyMusic button takes you to your online music archive, which you can upload using the imeem Uploader client on your PC or Mac. imeem hypes this as being a storage saver for mobile devices--upload your music collection and stream it instead of storing it on your phone!--but that'll cost you. The free version of MyMusic only stores 100 songs (hardly worth the trouble), and it'll cost you $30 or $100 a year for access to a collection of up to 1,000 or 20,000 songs, respectively. That seems a bit steep.
If you're an imeem fan, you'll be glad to know that your imeem profile carries over to the app; your favorite artist stations are all there for you to stream by pressing the Favorites button. As with Pandora, these stations are built around you favorite artists and feature similar music, which you can rate or buy from iTunes as you listen. As you rate music, the stations further tune themselves to your tastes.
