Universal signs deal with imeem. imeem now has deals to stream music from all four major labels. I like imeem, especially for embedding playlists in this blog, but Wired claims only 30-second samples will be available with embedded players (and sure enough, the playlist they show only has samples); imeem wants you to go to their site and see the ads before you stream whole songs--which makes sense if rumors that imeem is paying a per-song fee and not a percentage of advertising revenue are true. However, Ars Technica's article has an embedded song which streams fine. So I'm hoping that imeem's filters just aren't letting all songs stream yet, but eventually will.

Unfortunately, it looks like imeem's main problem remains: songs are still uploaded by users, so not everything is available, and quality and accuracy isn't always assured. It would be nice if the record labels provided the sites with their catalog, but still, the ability to upload and share with others any major label song is a nice thing to have.

I'm not sure how imeem is doing signing up indie labels; I just checked some previous posts, and it looks like Lee Hazlewood's last album is now streamable, but Porter Wagoner's last album still isn't streamable.