I was drifting through pages on the internet when I stumbled on imeem.com.  Imeem caught my eye because it promised the ability to create online playlists that I can listen to with no limits and without the need to purchase anything.  I was a little suprised given all the copyright and license disputes that have gone down in the past few years surrounding digital media.  I signed up for my free Imeem.com account and sure enough within minutes I had my playlist stocked with tons of my favorites. 

I could not believe that is was so simple and that there were so many songs to choose from, especially songs that I like!  I decided to head to google and look around for some news about imeem and sure enough there was some.  Back in July of 2007 a few months after Imeem had first shone up on the web they ran afoul of Warner Bros, who sent them a little care package containing a law suit for copyright violations.  They were looking for up to $150,000 for every song that was found to be in violation of any Warner Bros held copyright.  It did not look good for imeem.  But in what I consider to be a huge jump outside of the box, imeem approached the media super giant with an alternative to litigating the tiny organization into oblivion; they asked Warner Bros to partner with them and share in the proceeds from the advertising revenue that Imeem brings in through its onsite advertising.  Warner Bros not only agreed but provided imeem.com with full access to its entire catalog.  Other media companies followed suit Sony, BMG, EMI making imeem the only site like it on the internet with the full support of multiple international media labels.

This is the proper way to pursue conflict resolution, by finding a solution that benefits everyone involved.  I consider this kind of thing something of a landmark for the Internet and promotion of the free flow of media and data around the globe.  It is encouraging to see such huge companies pursue alternative action in this way, incredible actually.

Head on over to imeem and check it out for yourself.  You cannot download the music that you listen to there (well you can but it will shoot you over to iTunes or amazon to purchase the tracks but at $0.99 a track, who cares, its well worth it for good tunes) but you can listen to it online as often as you like and share your playlists with other users of imeem.com and facebook.com. 

Also if you are interested here is the link to both the news article about imeem and imeem itself.

Article: Making Music Free and Legal

Imeem: www.imeem.com