Imeem decided to shut down after being sued before selling assets to MySpace for less than $1 million.  The Orchard Enterprises told Imeem to pay them for profits made from music belong to labels or pay $150,000 per copyright infringement instance according to Liz Gannes of GigaOM.

A MySpace company spokesperson said that MySpace was not involved in the lawsuit personally.  In that case, it is likely that MySpace acquired the assets that were not involved in Imeem’s lawsuit.  Imeem’s technology acquired by MySpace will be rolled into MySpace Music.

Imeem raised a total of $35 million in VC funding from Sequoia Capital, Morgenthaler Ventures, and Warner Music.  Warner Music had also previously sued Imeem.

iMeem themselves have bought out Snocap and Anywhere.FM. Now it is rumored that MySpace is close to buying out iMeem. iMeem themselves have bought out SNOCAP and Anywhere.FM.

The reason why the acquisition hasn’t take place as of yet is because there is stakeholder approval pending. The amount for buying out the company is not expected to be high considering the amount of venture capital that iMeem had to take in for survival.

Once getting bought out, iMeem will more than likely be rolled into MySpace Music.

During the quarter ended March 31, 2009, the Company determined that its cost-method investments in digital venture capital companies were impaired largely due to the current economic environment and changing business conditions from the time of the initial investment. In accordance with FAS 157, the Company used Level 3 inputs to determine the fair value of these investments, which include management’s estimates of assumptions that market participants would use in pricing these assets. As a result, the Company recorded charges of $29 million, including $16 million to write-off its investment in imeem, inc. (“imeem”) and $11 million to write-down its investment in lala media, inc (“lala”) to its estimated fair value.

Imeem recently raised additional funding and is putting together an iPhone application.  Imeem’s valuation was north of $200 million at one point but has fallen since.  Warner invested $20 million in Lala and $15 million in Imeem.

[via VentureBeat]

The company was in such a bad financial position that they almost considered shutting down.  However the company raised funding earlier this month to keep them running in business.  The investors and the dollar amount involved are not clear, but rumor has it that the previous investors are involved.

Imeem had previously raised $18.8 million in funding from First Round, Sequoia, Warner Brothers, and Morgenthalter Ventures.  Other angel investors include Mark Goines, Ron Conway, Geoff Ralston, and Sy Fahimi.

On May 20, Imeem will have an application released for the iPhone as well.  The application will have the ability to create custom playlists, have personalized music recommendations, and stream playlists from their Imeem profiles.   The application will be free.

[via CNET/Billboard]

In the rest of the goodbye e-mail, Shugars reminisced about good times working at the search engine company.  This includes the time when he put cake down his pants at a sales conference.  He also stole his boss’ $8,000 leather couch.  And he also sang “Hit Me Baby One More Time” while wearing a mini-skirt and braids.

“It took me a long time to write it,” stated Shugars.  “I didn’t want to send out a stale ‘good working with you, please reach me here’ e-mail. Who wants that?”  Shugars, 34, left Google to become Director of Ad Operations of Imeem.  Imeem is a music social media company that receives abou 25 million visitors per month and gains about 65,000 new users per day.

Below is a video of Shugars being featured on The Today Show.

[via L.A. Times]

Below is the full e-mail he sent out (via TheShugars):

My Goodbye Email.
Well I’m almost done here at the GOOG. It’s been a helluva ride, and I’m super grateful for the chance to work with incredible people in an incredible environment.

Here’s the goodbye email I sent out yesterday if you’re interested…

================
Subject: So long suckers! I’m out!
Message Body:

Ha ha! Just kidding! Sort of.
When thinking of writing my goodbye email, I actually debated writing anything at all.
For a company this size it seems a bit ridiculous, but what the hell.
Here goes…

As I’m sitting here at work 5:17 PM on the Wednesday of my last week at Google, quaffing Bud Light, and blasting music (N.W.A.) from my computer speakers, I cannot help but think of how good this little ole place has been to little ole me.
The flood of good memories vastly outweighs the bad. It’s only been 4.5 years but thanks to Google I’ve managed to pack a lot of living into that time.

Some fond memories and highlights I leave with:

- Moving from one building to the next every 6 months and yet always having a window, an office, and a kick ass coworker to share it with. I’ve racked up good office karma and I’m not sure how exactly.
- Putting cake down my pants in front of a crowd of my “peers” for $100. Thank you 1st Sales Conference and copious amounts of cheap wine.
- Stealing Omid’s comfy leather couch on accident. Somehow we really imagined no one wanted an $8000 leather sofa. Lesson learned: Crime DOES pay…and how! Thanks again Omid.
- Traveling to over 15 different countries preaching the gospel of Compliance to the masses. That’s a lot of traveling in 3 years for a guy who’d never been out of North America.
- Living in Sydney, Australia for 7 months. One of the loveliest cities on the planet with some of my favorite people in the world…strangely enough most of them Irish or Kiwis. Well, ok. You Aussies are pretty choice too.
- Helping build the world-class Asia Pacific & Latin America (APLA) sales operations organization. Boy that’s a mouthful! Love all the damned acronyms. Not.
- Thursday Happy Hours or TGIAF in the Sun Room and Blue Room dishing dirt on each other, getting tipsy, creating Match.com profiles for outraged coworkers, and quaffing strange liquor from exotic locales.
- Singing “Hit Me Baby One More Time” in a mini-skirt and braids to a crowd of my “peers”. Ha ha. Peers. Again, I love it.
- Seeing dignitary after dignitary stroll through Google week after week, month after month, year after year. I damned well didn’t see every one of them, hear every one of them, or take pictures with any of them and put the pictures on my cube wall like I’m famous or something…but I loved working at a company where I had the opportunity to do so if I wanted.
- And many more…like the incident at last years sales conference, which I REFUSE to mention. Too much scotch, not enough dinner, and a bathroom floor. EPIC FAIL.

So I leave the Google in your well-manicured hands! Take care of her. She’s been good to me and I’ll really miss her.
The next generation with their MBA’s, blue shirts, and tan slacks have arrived and it’s time for one such as me to depart.
Don’t forget the sunscreen, work harder better faster stronger, it’s the circle of life, scale new heights without me, the children are the future, etc. and so on.

My last day is Friday May 23rd.
Drinks tonight at The Sports Page. Join me for a cold one. 5:30 PM.

Thanks,
Jason Adrian Shugars
P.S. I’ve been offended by not getting people’s farewell emails before, but now, facing up to the task of not spamming and not leaving anyone out, I see it’s a daunting one.
If this reached you and you don’t give a hoot that I’m leaving, sorry for the spam. If this was forwarded to you and you’re offended at being left off the list, sorry as well. (Thanks Rich for the quote!)
P.P.S. Contact details: jasonadrian@gmail.com, 619-459-4201.

Within the last year, imeem acquired SNOCAP and Anywhere.FM.  imeem has over 24 million uniques per month and their widget reaches over 100 million users per month.

Lala.com has 5 million songs in their catalog that users can play for free.  Users can add songs to their collection for 10 cents and buy MP3s for 79 cents.

Related Links:
1. imeem
2. Lala.com
3. Warner Music Group

Music streaming company, imeem has announced recently that they have acquired SNOCAP, a Digital Rights Management company started by Shawn “Napster” Fanning.  SNOCAP owns their own digital registry platform that allows independent artists to control their music distribution.  SNOCAP has over 7 million songs in their digital registry.

Financial details were undisclosed.

imeem spent the past year ramping up advertisements and partnerships.  In 2007, imeem made deals with Universal, EMI, Warner Brothers, and Sony.  While SNOCAP has been MySpace’s partner for spreading independent music.  Through the acquisition the COO of SNOCAP, Ali Aydar will be joining imeem as VP of Operations.

Information Source:
[1] MarketingVOX: Music Streaming Service imeem Buys Indie DRM Firm SNOCAP