GarageBand.com, the well-known indie music store, discovery & review service and online community, will be discontinued as of July 15th, 2010, more than 10 years after it first saw the light of day.
In an email sent to users this morning, the company that spawned social music discovery service iLike (now part of MySpace), the GarageBand team says users can register for an iLike account to have their music, profile pic and bio automatically linked up and ported over.
(Strangely, you can still sign up for a GarageBand account.)
If you’ve recently purchased music on GarageBand and think you deserve a refund, you can contact the company to request one, but do it before July 31st.
Here’s the email they sent, as forwarded by a reader:
Dear [user],
It’s been over ten years since we started helping discover independent music on the ol’ interwebs. Things have changed a lot since then. Most of those changes have been good and some of them have been bad. Some changes are just bitter-sweet.
It’s with this bitter-sweetness that we are announcing today that Garageband.com will be discontinued as of July 15th, 2010.
The landscape of how music is discovered and delivered has changed drastically over the last decade and we are proud to have been a huge part of that change — first with Garageband.com and then with iLike.com and beyond. Sadly, that landscape will not include Garageband.com anymore.
Link your account to iLike: (action required)
If you want to continue to make your music available for streaming or download on iLike.com and the iLike application on Facebook, please go to iLike.com and login with your Garageband username and password by July 15th, 2010. This will automatically link your account to iLike so we can port your music, profile photo, and biography to iLike.com.Finally, if you have recently made a purchase on Garageband.com and would like a refund, please email refunds@iLike-inc.com to request a refund. Valid refund requests must be received no later than July 31st, 2010.
Sincerely,
The Garageband and iLike team
The news comes about 2 months after we found out iLike founders (and twin brothers) Ali Partovi and Hadi Partovi simultaneously stepped down from their executive positions at MySpace to pursue opportunities as advisors and angel investors.
Possibly, this has something to do with the decision to also pull the plug on GarageBand.
May it rest in peace.
(Kudos to Jacob Cook for the tip)