Imeem redesigns as competition toughens

Music site Imeem has undergone a redesign that premiered yesterday evening, streamlining the service as its OpenSocial comrade MySpace chews up headlines with MySpace Music.

Imeem has been delivering social playlisting for nearly two years, and has finally reworked its site to be more friendly to the new user. To assist in the discovery of new music, a spotlight page with streams of new artists has been added. A new "Discover" page gives personal recommendations based upon browsing habits on the site, growing the lists as the user uses the site more.

A "Browse" page has been set up as a sort of site-wide popularity ranking of content. It can be filtered by type (music, video, photo), genre, or popularity. The artist pages have also been redesigned to pull content posted anywhere in the community onto a single page. This is a feature that MySpace could have used a long time ago, with many unofficial sites popping up for popular artists that make searching a bit more complicated than it needs to be.

Imeem still trumps MySpace Music in its playlist creation, allowing unlimited tracks to be listed. By contrast, Myspace allows only ten lists of ten songs before users reach their limit. Also, Imeem allows its playlists and content to be embedded in other sites, to be consumed in a number of different ways. MySpace Music limits all activity -- save purchasing songs on Amazon -- to within the confines of the branded player.