Dalton Caldwell, the chief executive of Imeem, a music-oriented social network, and Steve Jang, Imeem’s director of business development and marketing, agreed to answer questions from Bits readers. Here is the first batch of their answers. If you have more questions, post them here.

Q: Do you think that the record companies are working with you, in part to counterbalance the power of iTunes?

Quoted: A month ago, CD-swapping service Lala took a risk: offering streaming complete albums from major artists, online and for free. ...

Quoted: The Universal Music Group notified Apple that it will not renew its annual contract to sell music through iTunes.

Quoted: Getty Images thinks it's time to reinvent the commercial music licensing business.

Well, music shouldn’t be free, people should pay for it. But until the labels wake up and authorize new modes of acquisition, allowing more people to own more music at a cheaper price, should free be a part of YOUR STRATEGY?

It already is. Even at the most basic level, the ability for the audience to hear four tracks on MySpace.

Every band has a MySpace site. You have to. The public EXPECTS IT! They just put your name and "MySpace" into the Google field and presume you’ll come up. You’re THRILLED IF PEOPLE WANT TO LISTEN! That’s the HARDEST PART, getting people to LISTEN! That’s what the labels have fucked up, the ability for people to HEAR the music. The old bait and switch, one good track that has to be purchased as part of an album of dreck, that paradigm is history, that’s done, the Net killed that.

And now the Net seems to have killed record stores.

And despite the long arm of the government, trying to kill small Web stations, the Internet is killing terrestrial radio.

And that free music, traded P2P and hard-drive swapped, it ends up on iPods, many people never even TOUCH the radio dial.

Right now, at the halfway mark in 2007, the revolution has finally begun.

EMI making a deal with SnoCap? Selling by track is economic death, never mind at $1.30. But notice they’re unprotected MP3s, UNTHINKABLE AS RECENTLY AS 2006! You see, EMI is DESPERATE!

Retail is fucked.

Are the labels fucked too?

It seems so. Their cash cows are going to do it themselves, like Prince and the Eagles, or extract heinous terms. And, if you’ve got no guaranteed sellers, HOW DO YOU MAKE YOUR NUMBERS?

By not even being in the new music game, by ceding that business to newcomers, functioning at a much lower economic level, and by selling the assets you already POSSESS!

Yup, trying to sell EVERY LAST ZEPPELIN track to people. Lower the price, and give people more.

Otherwise, the way we’re going, people are going to EXPECT, like with Prince, that the music be FREE!

Call it the Summer of Digital Love: This season may go down as the moment record companies woke up and started figuring out how to sell music on the Web. Earlier this month, Downtown Records — home to Gnarls Barkley (pictured above) and now Spank Rock — revealed intentions to start RCRD LBL, an online-only imprint that will give music away for free and support itself with advertising revenue.

Quoted: SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--imeem, the fastest-growing social media network, today announced the launch of a pioneering initiative powered by SNOCAP, the premier music technology company

Quoted: According to Reuters, British Omnifone has signed deals with the big four music labels (Universal, EMI, Sony/BMG, and Warner Music) and 30 cell ...