Not just for streaming

Imeem Mobile is a free music streaming application for the iPhone that bears a resemblance to similar offerings from Pandora, Last.fm, and Slacker. The application offers the ability to stream, search, and purchase music over Wi-Fi or cellular connections.

The most distinguishing feature of Imeem's music application is cloud storage. The Imeem app allows you to call up any song or album in your home media collection and play it without the restrictions associated with most services (i.e. limited skips, and the inability to play songs from the same artist back-to-back).

In order to stream music from your personal collection, you first need to upload your music to imeem.com from your desktop using its free Mac/PC-compatible client. There are limits to how many songs you can store. The first 100 songs uploaded to the site are free, but anything more will require a VIP service ($29.99 per year for up to 1,000 songs, or $99.99 per year for up to 20,000).

Beyond the appeal of streaming your music collection form the cloud, the rest of the Imeem application falls somewhere between the simplicity of the Pandora app, and the more personalized, social approach of Last.fm. The main menu screen offers a selection of top-ranked songs from Imeem.com, personalized listening recommendations, and a rotating selection of curated content (URB magazine's "Next 100," for example). For a free music App, Imeem strikes good balance of features and audio quality, and will certainly please existing fans of Imeem's Web site.