MySpace Continues To Get Trashed Over Imeem Shutdown

It’s been nearly a week since MySpace Music closed its acquisition of some of the assets of music service Imeem and redirected imeem.com to music.myspace.com. MySpace took a lot of heat for the sudden shutdown of the Imeem service, particularly the API.

But the fact is that MySpace didn’t shut the Imeem service down. Imeem’s creditors and the music labels did. If MySpace hadn’t done the deal Imeem would have shut down anyway. The company was just out of cash and options, and the wheels had come off the car. For the most part the press now gets that MySpace had very little to do with the shutdown, and has settled down.

Imeem’s 16 million monthly visitors apparently haven’t gotten the message, though, and every couple of minutes one of them fires off a frustrated message on Twitter. One example just a few minutes ago, in the image above: “Imeem, one of the best music sites, died, destroyed by MySpace.” Another: “RIP imeem, I will dearly miss you…All the more reason to hate myspace. They sold out on Dec. 8th.” Users are particularly upset about losing their playlists, something MySpace has said they’d work hard to transition “as quickly as possible.”

It’s not exactly the warms hug MySpace probably thought they’d receive when they stepped in and saved as much of the Imeem service as they could. And with the benefit of hindsight some basic communication to Imeem users other than the shock of a redirect to MySpace Music might have been a good idea. Like an email to users telling them what was happening, for example.

But the result is the same. The demise of Imeem had nothing to do with MySpace, and whatever parts of the service do live on will only do so because MySpace stepped in to buy some of Imeem’s assets. The hard part, of course, is getting that message to those 16 million pissed off users.