June 25th, 2009
UPDATED: We are delaying the removal of imeem’s photo storage features until Wednesday, July 15th. This will give imeem users extra time to transition those photos to other services.

I want to let people in the imeem community know about a few changes we’re making next week to simplify the site.

Starting next Tuesday, June 30th, we will no longer offer the imeem community the ability to access user-uploaded videos and photos. Any photos or videos that you have uploaded to your profile, or to groups you’re a member of, will be removed from imeem on the 30th. In preparation for next week’s changes, we’ve removed the option to upload photos or videos from our Web-based and desktop upload software.

We’re making these changes as part of an overall effort to simplify imeem so it’s cleaner and easier to navigate. This means enhancing imeem’s most popular social music features, and de-emphasizing some (like user-generated photos and videos) that are less popular, cost more to host & stream, or are of less interest to our advertisers. Simply put, there’s no ROI for us in UGV.

People come to imeem to enjoy music; we want to make it even easier for you to discover, buy & socialize around the music you love. Our recently revamped artist pages, which aggregate artists’ music and videos on a single page, and our new search page are just two examples of how we’re already refining the experience in direct response to feedback we’ve gotten from our community.

This doesn’t mean video is going away on imeem. You’ll still be able to watch thousands of music videos. And creating original video will continue to be a part of the services we offer for our advertisers.

One more thing: next week’s changes will not affect your profile pictures, or the MP3s you have uploaded to imeem – we will continue to give people the ability to upload and stream their music on imeem.

I realize that many of you may have questions about these changes. We’ve created a FAQ here to answer some of them, and have also set up a dedicated customer support forum where you can ask questions or share your concerns. We appreciate your support.

Dalton