moodmat

About a month back, Imeem jumped to the top of compete.com’s ranking of the Top 20 Streaming Music Sites.

I’m guessing all of the other media you can stream or plunk down on your blog (pretty damn easily, I should add) didn’t hinder their cresting the ten million unique user mark. But I have to wonder what this list would look like if it were focused on the Top 20 Social Music Sites. Or even Top 10 Places to Discover Music. I don’t think they’d be sitting quite as pretty.

As a recommendation engine, Imeem is a sad and frustrated old man. Or maybe that’s me after using it.

Plugging some of my more frequent artists found plenty of songs to seed some new discoveries. But after that, it was entertainingly bad. Clicking on “play next related song” would often stay stuck on the same artist, and sometimes on one particular album. Other times, it was just plain silly, as was this jump from Metro Area:

One saving grace I’ve seen so far is the presence of labels such as Domino, consolidating playlists, artists, video, etc. and essentially duplicating their label presence where the earholes are. Part and parcel of doing business on social networks, but they’re really doing Imeem a favor here. Without a particularly smart way to discover music, labels can help listeners the way they used to. You may not particularly care for them as arbiters of taste, but hey, they beat genres any day.