MySpace Music, a joint venture between MySpace and the major labels, completed a deal to acquire "certain assets" of the popular social networking site Imeem on Tuesday. Imeem is now offline. Various reports claimed the deal was done over the weekend, but MySpace Music CEO Owen Van Natta announced that the two companies only finalized the deal today.

So, what does MySpace Music have in store for imeem? According to Van Natta, MySpace Music plans to "leverage imeem’s industry leading technology" for starters, and "over time, meaningfully integrate their products into the MySpace Music experience."

The entire imeem service has been removed from the internet, and its smartphone applications no longer function. According to two sources with knowledge of the deal who asked not to be named, imeem's full-track-playback licenses essentially expired as a result of its inability to keep up with licensing payments, which apparently combined with a lawsuit from The Orchard (more on that below) forced the site's sale to MySpace Music and near-simultaneous closure.

The imeem.com domain now redirects to MySpace Music, while links to some individual songs on imeem now redirect to their corresponding pages on MySpace's recently-acquired iLike site (where, ironically, some of the songs come from MySpace competitor YouTube). Embedded imeem songs and playlists, including hundreds I have posted on Wired.com, no longer load at all. Imeem CEO Dalton Caldwell, CTO Bryan Berg, COO Ali Aydar and VP of Sales David Wade have signed on to MySpace Music as consultants to "help manage this transition," including porting imeem playlists over to MySpace Music, which has its own licensing agreements.

Of particular interest to MySpace Music – the ad-supported, on-demand music service not to be confused with MySpace's band pages – are imeem's 16 million worldwide users and its staff's experience in building the first music service that allowed users to (https://www.wired.com/listening_post/2007/12/imeem-signs-dea/) on third-party websites. MySpace Music also gets imeem's SnoCap property – a large database of music, co-founded by Napster's Shawn Fanning, that allows independent bands to sell music on imeem, MySpace and other sites through embeddable widgets.

Visitors to imeem.com are now redirected to MySpace Music (updated).

According to insiders, imeem, which was already struggling to cover its music licensing fees in a weak advertising market, was brought to its knees by a lawsuit from independent music consortium The Orchard that accused imeem of playing TVT Records' music without the proper licensing. The lawsuit asked for the maximum penalty of $150,000 per infringed song; imeem apparently thought it had a case, but lacked the funds to pursue it.

You were fun while you lasted, imeem, rest in peace – although it looks like you'll rest in pieces instead. Fans now have one less licensed music source.

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