Imeem to acquire flailing music company Snocap?

Imeem, a popular social network for music sharing, is acquiring music site Snocap, which lets bands set their own licensing terms for music downloads, according to TechCrunch.

No source was named, and the amount isn’t being disclosed.

Imeem had already partnered with Snocap, we reported last year, to pay a share of ad revenue to music content owners using Snocap’s technology.

Snocap had fallen on tough times recently, and it’s possible that one of its investors, Morgenthaler Ventures, decided Snocap made a good fit with Imeem, another of the firm’s investments.

Imeem also recently acquired Anywhere.fm, a Y Combinator company billing itself as “iTunes for the Web” (our coverage).

San Francisco-based Snocap, which wanted to let bands set their own licensing terms for music downloaded on the Web, is best known as the company started by Napster co-founder Shawn Fanning, although Fanning has since left to found gaming company Rupture. Struggling to find a business model, Snocap cut its staff by 60 percent in October, and was rumored to be up for sale (our coverage).

As TechCrunch and others are noting, Imeem probably prefers this outcome to Snocap going under.

Yesterday, we wrote about Kobalt Music Group, which is pursuing something similar to Snocap’s failed business model. But as we noted, there’s a key difference — Kobalt doesn’t just license music, it publishes music too.