Imeem makes an aggressive lurch

This may make Imeem an overwhelming success, or it may steal every dime they make. Apparently, they've inked a deal with Universal to allow users to stream and embed any song they want anywhere. Pure genius of an idea that everyone should get behind. The idiot factor? They have to pay Universal every time the song gets played, plus Universal gets a cut of Imeem's advertising revenue. Sounds okay, except that once you think that by the time Imeem makes similar deals with the other big labels, they're going to have no revenue left for themselves!

On the other side, it's a pure profit play for Universal. I think Matt Buchanan over at Gizmodo said it about as well as anyone can:

No wonder labels don't want to deal with iTunes, this kind of deal is pure money: Imeem's paying the labels so that its users can do free promo work for them! Why pay to advertise your artists when someone else can pay you to do it? Hell, users even do all of the uploading work. If you recall, this kind of arrangement's familiar to Universal—they got kickbacks on every Zune sold—and more immediately, they've got a service going with Nokia that intuition says they're not hooked into for charity or a good time on your part.
While this deal's not really making too much headway in their battle against iTunes, it shows they're looking pretty much anywhere and everywhere that'll make 'em a buck while they look for an endrun around Steve. They probably won't get his contract with the devil canceled anytime soon, but it looks like they've found that internet thing they were looking for. Maybe they'll find that "Facebook" thing next.

Update: Sorry, I just noticed Imeem already has deals with the other majors. I still say that doesn't change much, but it is noteworthy.