That staple of ’80s culture, the mixtape, has found new life at social networking website Imeem.com. Created by Dalton Caldwell, ’04, and Jan Jannink, MS ’96, PhD ’01, Imeem invites people to express themselves through the music, videos and photos that they like, and connect with others who share similar interests. The name of the site is a play on the concept of “memes,” ideas or behaviors that spread virally.
Unlike the painstaking process of dubbing favorite tunes onto a cheap cassette, Imeem makes it easy for users to assemble playlists from its vast catalog of streaming media and share their compilations with friends, all for free. “I usually tell people, ‘Think of a song, any song, and do a search.’ And they can listen to it,” Caldwell says. “That’s usually enough to get the ‘Aha!’ moment.”
What sets Imeem apart from sites like MySpace, Last.fm and Lala is the selection of content available. Imeem is able to stream millions of full-length songs and video clips on demand without running afoul of copyright laws, thanks to ad-revenue-sharing deals with four major content providers—something no label had ever agreed to when Caldwell and company sealed their first deal with Warner Music Group in 2007. Independent artists can get in on the action, too, by uploading their own content.
With 25 million visitors per month, the site ranks among top online entertainment destinations like Yahoo Music and AOL Music. Analysts estimate that Imeem takes in millions of dollars per year from advertisers like Microsoft and Apple, though Caldwell says the company has yet to turn a profit.
Still, the 70-person firm’s unprecedented licensing deals, popularity and piracy-free operation have changed the game of online music, says Mark Cooper, a longtime fellow at Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society. In turn, online music has had a democratizing effect on the music industry at large.
“[Imeem] is a perfect example of the dynamic innovation that has filled the music space in spite of efforts by the recording industry to lock it down,” Cooper says. “It tells us a great deal about how these battles will play out in other sectors.”
At Stanford, Caldwell was always on the cutting edge of technology—if not ahead of it—according to his undergraduate adviser, lecturer Todd Davies, ’85, MS ’85, PhD ’95. Obsessed with instant messaging but frustrated by the limitations of chat software (you couldn’t share pictures, audio or video easily), the psychology and symbolic systems double major envisioned instant messaging as a robust social networking medium. Imeem was inspired by his senior honors thesis on “Extending instant messaging for collaboration in the workplace.”
After graduating, Caldwell met Jannink, formerly a senior engineer for infamous file-swapping company Napster, through mutual friends. The pair built the initial code and database structure for the site, which launched in 2005. But the breakthrough feature—the mixtape—was an afterthought, Caldwell says. When users asked for a means to organize the songs and images they uploaded to the site, Imeem introduced the playlist function. Usage spiked overnight, with tens of thousands of playlists created in the first 24 hours. Now, mixes created by prominent music critics Pitchfork.com and the New Yorker’s Sasha Frere-Jones garner millions of listeners a month, and are a boon for under-the-radar bands.
“The key to the mixtape is self-expression,” Caldwell says. “Not only is the playlist a utility to organize songs, it’s a personal statement that you share with friends.”
DAVID DOWNS is a freelance journalist based in San Francisco.
