The icon on the left represents iOS’s music app. The icon on the right is for a now-shuttered Myspace service called iLike. Apple introduced the Music app to iOS in 2007 with the iPod touch. iLike was founded in 2006, granted its trademark 2008, acquired by Myspace in 2009 and then shutdown earlier this year. But in a recent decision by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, Apple cannot trademark… → Read More
Keep an eye on yet-to-be launched Picadee, a new Seattle startup getting some buzz. The company was founded by former iLike employees Marcus Womack, Mike Bohlander, Ray Fortna and Josh Hepfer, and has taken a seed round of funding from iLike founders Ali Partovi and Hadi Partovi.
The company isn’t saying what it’s doing yet, but this is a team that has performed well together before. They built… → Read More
If the new Ping sidebar that was launched today as a part of iTunes 10.0.1 looks familiar, perhaps it’s because you’ve been using the iLike Sidebar — an iTunes (and Windows Media Player) plug-in that does pretty much the same thing. We know at least one person finds the two very similar: Ali Partovi, the co-founder of iLike.
“I just hope Apple also copies iLike’s mission of democratizing music… → Read More
When a service such as Facebook limits users’ creative freedom, it is inevitable that other add-on services will overcome this limitation. This is why then, we see more and more Facebook tab apps that give us more control and freedom when it comes to customizing a fan page or a personal profile.
I can’t really understand why Facebook doesn’t create an editor that lets users create a super fan… → Read More
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… → Read More
Troubled social networking giant MySpace has lost another key executive with the recent departure of John Faith, until recently General Manager and Vice President of MySpace Mobile. His resignation hasn’t been announced yet (nor has his LinkedIn profile been updated), but we’ve confirmed hallway rumors that he jumped ship at the end of January 2010 both with the man in question and the company he… → Read More
Of all the things Google has launched this past year, the most useful may be its Music Onebox feature that allows you to easily play popular music from Google Search results. Following its debut in October, I found myself using it left and right for songs I wanted to listen to. One thing I noticed was that while deals were in place with iLike, imeem, Rhapsody, and Pandora, the majority of the… → Read More
Sometimes you have to apply the smell test to what your sources are telling you, and the rumors we’re hearing about Apple’s purchase of music service LaLa are definitely smelling a little off. $80 million for LaLa? That isn’t what we’re hearing.
LaLa was purchased for $17 million by Apple, according to our sources with indirect knowledge of the deal. And the company supposedly had $14 million in… → Read More
MySpace is in late stage negotiations to acquire music streaming service iMeem, we’ve confirmed from multiple sources. MySpace is on a bit of an acquisition spree – they acquired iLike, another music service, three months ago.
The iMeem acquisition isn’t yet finalized, we’ve heard from sources, and awaits approval from various stakeholders.
We don’t know the price of the acquisition, but this… → Read More
Did Facebook finally unfriend iLike? It certainly looks that way. Facebook is restricting iLike from showing people’s music data in their profiles (the songs and artists they like) or alerting them to upcoming concerts through Facebook notifications. The ban on notifications appears to be part of Facebook’s recent moves to fight app spam. It is not clear what music data specifically will be… → Read More
Now that the dust is settling on the newly launched Google Music (if you don’t yet have it in your normal Google search results, you can use it here) that integrates LaLa and iLike/MySpace streaming music, all I can think of is this: What were Facebook and Ticketmaster thinking when they passed up the opportunity to acquire iLike?
MySpace is the big lottery winner here. They bought iLike for $20… → Read More
TechCrunch writer Jason Kincaid traveled down to Los Angeles earlier today to cover the launch of Google Music Onebox. In addition to his live notes from the event and the panel, he managed to point his camera at just about everyone involved in the new service: Google Director Product Management Search R.J. Pittman, MySpace Music President Courtney Holt and LaLa founder Bill Nguyen. Jason also… → Read More
I’m here at Capitol Records in Hollywood, California for a special media event where Lala, MySpace, iLike, Google and others are officially announcing the launch of Google’s Music Onebox — a special new kind of Google search result that will let you instantly stream songs directly from Google’s results page. We first broke the news of the feature’s impending launch last week, though none of the… → Read More
None of the companies involved will confirm the new Google Music service – we have “no comments” or absolute silence from Google, LaLa, MySpace and iLike. But the new service is all but confirmed. And we have the screenshots showing how the service, which will be announced on October 28, will look to prove it.
Matt Ghering, a product marketing manager at Google, has been one of the people talking… → Read More
One thing about MySpace – they’ve always had far more colorful executives than the more buttoned up Facebook exec team. Of course, those partying and committing federal crimes days are history with the new team in place.
Or so we thought…
A new group of execs were brought in today. And among them are the cofounders of music startup iLike, Ali Partovi and Hadi Partovi. As usual, we peruse the… → Read More
MySpace has just announced the appointment of four new members to its executive team, which saw a major shakeup last April. The new hires include Nada Stirratt, who will serve as Chief Revenue Officer and Dustin Finer, who is now Chief People Officer. Joining them will be iLike founders (and brothers) Ali Partovi, who is now SVP of Business Development based in San Francisco, and Hadi Partovi as… → Read More
The ink isn’t even dry on the MySpace/iLike acquisition, and already Facebook has a new crush on a different music service, Spotify.
We’ve heard that Facebook has been talking with the European startup about a partnership for well over a year (about the time the Facebook music rumors heated up), but that the talks have intensified dramatically in the last week.
And just as we were digging into… → Read More
I’m a Web fanatic, I admit. But you probably already knew that… My work environment has been completely web based for years now. The same applies to my music. Like many people, I used to download music from Kazaa or eMule (Yeah, I know some of you still do). Most of the time now, I listen to music on the web and don’t have any need to download it. My laptop benefits the most from this… → Read More
As expected, MySpace has confirmed that it bought iLike. It is not disclosing financial terms, but our information is that it was around $20 million.
During the conference call, Van Natta stressed the importance of music, open content distribution, and talent as the main drivers behind the deal. He also put to rest misinformed speculation that there was any delay in the deal due to tax issues… → Read More
MySpace just sent out an advisory that it will be holding a press conference shortly at 11:45 PT.
CEO Owen Van Natta will be making an announcement (which , incidentally, will be his first public statement since taking over last April).
Could this be the official announcement that MySpace is buying iLike, the acquisition that got away from Facebook and Amazon? That’s our guess. Deal… → Read More
There’s lots of speculation out there on the yet-to-be-closed MySpace acquisition of iLike that we first reported on Monday.
Much of that speculation is factually incorrect, we’ve confirmed from a source close the the deal. iLike, which has been profitable for over a year, had multiple offers to be acquired.
Our source says that, in addition to MySpace’s offer, both Facebook and Amazon submitted… → Read More
As more details emerge about the MySpace-iLike acquisition, all sorts of interesting observations and questions pop up. A few thoughts:
The Facebook Angle
This is by far the most interesting angle to the deal. iLike is the most popular music application on Facebook, and is the de facto Facebook Music app. That company will shortly be owned by MySpace, Facebook’s primary competitor. That puts… → Read More
MySpace is close to acquiring popular social music service iLike, we’ve confirmed with multiple sources. The deal, which should close this week, will be MySpace’s first acquisition since new CEO Owen Van Natta took control of the company in April 2009. The price is “around $20 million.”
iLike, which launched in late 2006, is a social music recommendation service that now has more than 50 million… → Read More
Popular music recommendation service iLike launched a music download service this afternoon, offering users MP3 downloads for $0.89 to $1.29 per song. Previously the service only offered users the ability to sample 30 second clips of songs, or restricted full streaming via a partnership with Rhapsody (now phased out).
iLike says the first song purchased today was Get Away, Jordan by Ernie Haase… → Read More
iLike is launching a new iPhone application today that takes advantage of the iPhone 3.0 update’s new features in some of the best ways that we’ve seen yet. Dubbed “Local Concerts”, the application lets you follow any artist you’d like and receive alerts whenever they announce that they’re coming to a local venue. For anyone who has ever tried to keep tabs on their local music scene, this is… → Read More
We’ve confirmed from multiple sources that San Francisco/Seattle based music service iLike, which has been profitable since 2008, is raising new capital in an unusual transaction designed to push out Ticketmaster, an investor since 2006.
The company has raised a total of $16.5 million from the founders, Scott Banister, Bob Pittman, Vinod Khosla and Ticketmaster to date. But their last round of… → Read More
iLike, the popular music discovery site with a huge presence on social networks, is launching a set of new syndication services for musicians. Beginning tonight, iLike now offers extensive integration with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube, allowing artists to distribute content to each of their online presences from a single control panel. In addition to these, the company is also… → Read More
Today, iLike released a social playlist app that lets you create a music playlsit and embed it on any Website. Then through Friend Connect, anyone can sign in and change or add to the playlist. I’ve embedded one below seeded with five songs that I’ve called TechCrunch House Party. Go ahead and add to it, but only good songs, please. Or create your own. → Read More
Facebook’s ongoing effort to launch a free streaming music service is stalled, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation. The company was close to a deal that would bring free streaming music from three of the four big labels (Universal, Sony, EMI) through the Total Music joint venture. But the deal stalled when the lone holdout, Warner Music, refused to participate.
Through most… → Read More
MOG demo’d the next version of their popular music service to me today, and I was impressed. It combines a best of breed interface with free on demand streaming and a Pandora-like music recommendation engine. The trouble is, it may never launch because only two of the four major music labels are supporting it so far.
MOG has a history of doing cool new things around music. The service today… → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
San Francisco
San Francisco, CA
