The company isn’t saying what it’s doing yet, but this is a team that has performed well together before. They built iLike (see our first coverage), which was eventually acquired by MySpace. iLike was the original “Facebook Music” app. – for a time it was by far the most popular third party application on Facebook.

This is also the team that created the popular concert discovery app for the iPhone that was featured in a commercial.

“I just hope Apple also copies iLike’s mission of democratizing music by empowering artists, especially the little guys. With Ping’s restrictions so far on artist signup, the major labels are the winners, not artists, and that breaks my heart,” Partovi told us today when asked about Ping’s newest feature.

For all the criticisms of Ping so far, this is one of the most troubling. The service is dominated by big-name artists from huge labels. That’s finally starting to change, but slowly.

When I talked to Apple about the issue around the time that Ping launched, the acknowledged that it might be a while before they had a system in place to make it easy for all artists to use Ping to connect with fans. But they were working on it, they said.

Partovi, who has since left iLike following the acquisition by MySpace, clearly wants to get in the “we were there first” jab, but also definitely cares about these smaller artists who are being largely overlooked so far with Ping. Regardless of features, hopefully Apple does copy that.

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 page. I can only guess they don’t want to deal with it and prefer their uniform design, which may be boring but at least it is consistent and familiar. Instead, Facebook lets other people get creative and offer an array of Facebook related apps built on the API. In any case, you must know this by now: A personalized page can drive more attention and probably, more traffic to your brand.

I’ve written about this subject over, and over, and over again here at TechCrunch. In this post, I just want to give you a clear picture about the best services that are out there, by gathering all the information in one place so it’s easier to save and use as needed. (Also check out AppBistro for more Facebook tab apps and reviews).

Please note that starting today, if you own a page on Facebook, you will need to customize the page under your tab to a width of 520 pixels. The reason Facebook is changing the tab size is because they want to leave the left sidebar open when you navigate from one tab to another, which might make sense, but don’t you just feel like they are changing stuff constantly? It is really hard to follow and adjust to the new changes for everyone, which is not cool. Why would you constantly want to alienate your users?

But I digress. Here are the 12 best services for making Facebook page tabs:

Miproapps—The newest service around, Miproapps allows users to design a fan page by simply dragging & dropping elements to the center of the page. I found it to be one of the best services I’ve tried so far because it really is very easy to use, and it only took me a few minutes to create an interactive fan page.

How it works: You just need to log-in with Facebook Connect, then the service will recognize your existing pages. Pick one, and you can start working on the page: You have basic edits like choosing page colors, height, and background image. Then you can move to the advanced editor and drag widgets from the sidebar to your right, into the center of the page. It includes photo/file sharing, status updates, blogs, audio, contact form, and much more. Easily customize their settings, and your page will be ready in no time. You can always go back and change it any way you see fit. The results are quite good and look like a nice company start-page. But note, that there are lots of widgets to choose from, you might end up with a cluttered page.

Cost: 1 free page/ad supported. (more plans & prices)

Tabfusion is an ultimate tab suite for your fan page and profile. Unlike most of the services offered here, Tabfusion has an app for each tab you want to add. I believe that the Twitter tab is the most used one, and Tabfusion was the first to release this kind of tab. This is probably why it has more than 122,000 monthly active users alone. But there are many more tab apps to choose from and the integration is done in a flash.

How it works: You choose an app from here and authorize the application. You will get an-easy-to-use guide for each app after authorization.

Cost: Profile pages are free. (more plans & prices)

15 apps await you at NorthSocial, a service that can help to make your Facebook page look a lot better than it looks now. Their easy-to-use applications enable anyone to quickly create & manage a custom Facebook page. I didn’t like two things though. First is the fact that each service is individual so you can’t create a page that combines elements such as video and pictures. The other thing is that none of the plans offer you the ability to use the apps in all of your pages.

How it works: Each of the apps are installed onto a Facebook page as a new tab. Each “account” will authorize one Facebook page to install all 15 apps at one time. So you can pick which apps you want to install and they will add tabs to your selected page.

Cost: 14-day free trial. (plans & prices)

Static520 will give you the ultimate welcome page, there’s no question about it. In fact, it is almost like having a mini-site inside your Fan page. If you have a site, this might be too much for you. But if you don’t, and you have your own small business, and are looking for ways to market your brand, then Static520 is a very good place to start.

How it works: A user sign up for the service and adds their content to the massive editor. The next step is to add the static FBML app to the page you want to customize. After you set this up, all you need to do is to copy the Static520 code into the Static FBML app. Change the tab name, and you’re good to go.

Cost: Two weeks of free trial, $19/year. (fair price)

We wrote about Pagemodo recently and since then around 6,000 Pages have been installed. The editor is easy to understand and very pleasant to use. The problem however, might be the fact that Pagemodo creates a static page, which means only text and photos that are not really click-able. But I’ve heard that they are about to launch a new template that will allow you to add video as well, one that will play directly from the page. If you are not satisfied with it you could always try Miproapps for more interaction on the page.

How it works: You go to this editor, log-in with your Facebook account, and then just follow the easy-to-use steps. Watch the Demo.

Cost: One page is free. (more plans & prices)

TabSite is one of the few services that also allows you to create a Welcome tab on your personal Facebook account. So you don’t have to own a page to enjoy and utilize this feature or service.

How it works: Again, you log in through Facebook Connect, then you’ll need to sign up for the service, go through some email verification, and then you can create your own tab. The creation of the tab is done by a text editor similar to WORD, which should be really easy for users to understand. However, after trying other services, I found TabSite to be a bit old fashioned, and I really hated the picture uploader, but it might be that new users will appreciate this kind of experience. You can have one tab for each personal and fan page that you manage. You will be able to manage them all in one easy to use Content Manager area.

Cost: Free for personal profile tab. You’ll need to pay for anything else. (more plans & prices)

Involver probably has the biggest gallery of applications around. Similar to NorthSocial, you can add only one application under one tab (unless you get Involver to maintain the page for you). Anyway, you can enjoy some of the best apps for free. Apps like Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, RSS, and more, are available for download.

How it works: The implementation is easy. Click on your desired app, and Involver will find the pages you admin and will let you choose which page you want to customize. But it looks like this is only a small part of what Involver offers. I’ve seen them partner with Facebook on the Stories page, so they must have some other essential services under development that are probably worth watching out for.

Cost: Free, Pro, and Premium apps.

Static FBML is the pioneer app that lets you add advanced functionality to your Page. This application will add a box to your Page in which you can render HTML or FBML (Facebook Markup Language) for enhanced Page customization. The problem is that you’ll need to know some basic HTML code, or at least find other services to help you deal with the coding (like Flickr, for example), as mentioned in our first guide. Bottom line, this should be your choice if you have the skills for that. If not, I suggest that you try the other services. After all, they are all based on the same principles with the same end goal.

Shoptab is for anyone who wants to bring e-commerce to their Facebook page. The service will help you set up a mini-store under a shop tab on Facebook.

How it works: First, you’ll need to upload your products to the ShopTab interface (which is similar to Google Base). Add “Shop” tab to your Facebook fan page, which allows your fans to browse your products directly on Facebook. If a visitor/fan clicks on “Buy” a product at your page, it will take him to the product page at your site.

Cost: 7 days of free trial. (more plans & prices)

Clobby provides you with a way to chat with people from your own page within a simple-to-use chat tab that can be installed on any Facebook page: profile or fan. Your pages can become a platform for fans to chat, and invite more friends to join in. You’re thinking to yourself: oh, I have chat on Facebook, why would I need another one. Well, Clobby is also a collaborative Chat Room, meaning everyone can join and chat together, which is somewhat neat, somewhat annoying—your choice.

How it works: Click on this link, choose your setup page (profile or page), and simply follow the instructions.

Cost: completely free.

iLike music is perhaps the best known music tab on Facebook. The service has two apps: One for regular profiles, where everyone can list favorite music/artists, get personalized concert alerts, create and share playlists, and discover and share new music and free MP3s. The other app is for professional musicians, where they can upload their own music, and share their events, photos, videos, and blog posts.

Cost: both apps are free to use.

Unlike ‘Like’, RootMusic uses a SoundCloud connection to promote music over a musician’s fan page on Facebook. RootMusic also allows the page creator to design it the way it suits him/her. The results can lead to a great looking page that will stand apart from other pages in Facebook, which is why musicians should use it. The creation process is pretty easy, it just may take some time to add all the information about yourself (bio, gigs date, etc). All you need to do is to connect through Facebook, and RootMusic will guide you from there.

A new feature called YouTube Tracks is an uploader on the BandPage Editor where musicians can upload YouTube Tracks to their profile, which fans can then share with their friends across the web. As a musician, you can link your YouTube account to Adsense so you will start earning revenue from performance royalties every time a fan plays your track. (Demo)

Cost: Free or pay $1.99/month for pro features.

As I mentioned, on Facebook is changing the size of their pages to 520 pixels, which means that page owners (you) will need to customize pages yet again.

If you own a page on Facebook, created by yourself and it contains FBML tabs, I suggest you go and adjust it to the new customization rules. If you use one of the tools above, they will fix it themselves.

BTW, if you need some page design inspiration, you can check out this directory.

*Comparison chart created by competitious.com.

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)

Faith has moved to Austin, Texas – just in time for SXSW – where he has joined local startup WhaleShark Media as SVP of Engineering.

That company’s still in stealth mode, but was founded by former Bankrate COO Cotter Cunningham, so we’ll be keeping a close eye on that one.

It’s worth noting that another key member of the MySpace Mobile team, Ulf Waschbusch, also left the company in July 2009 – he recently landed at gaming startup Garena.

I asked MySpace who was running all things mobile now that both employees walked away from the company, and they informed me that stepping in for Faith is Nat Brown. In case you’re not familiar with that name, Brown was once one of Microsoft’s foremost technical minds – he created and evangelized the ActiveX/COM object model in the early nineties and went on to play a crucial role in the creation of XML, DHTML, and the first Xbox.

Brown went on to do a brief stint as CTO at CAC Media before serving the same role at online music startup iLike, which was acquired by MySpace in August 2009.

MySpace says Brown will henceforth be taking charge of the Mobile division, and that we can expect a lot from that particular unit in the “very, very near future”.

We’ll see.

Why? It’s hard to know for sure, but it seems pretty likely that Apple’s recent deal to purchase Lala is at play. At the very least, it would seem that behind-the-scenes politics are dictating the results now being shown. We noted at the time of the Apple/Lala deal that it could change the Onebox offering, and it looks like it has. Plenty of results that used to serve up a Lala play option now default to iLike, which itself is now a part of MySpace Music (as is imeem). In fact, doing a random sampling of 30 popular songs brought yielded 28 iLike Onebox results, and only 2 Lala results. The problem with this is that for the majority of iLike Onebox results, you can only listen to either 30 or 90 second clips, rather than the entire songs, like you could on Lala. That obviously makes Google Music Onebox music much less useful.

A couple weeks ago, BusinessWeek got a comment from R.J. Pittman, Google’s director of product management, stating the Apple’s Lala deal would not alter the Google/Lala agreement. “We are agreeing to continue to leave the service as it is,” he said. (Apple declined to comment on the matter.) But this may simply mean that Lala will remain as one of the Onebox options, but has been taken out as the featured player for most musical content.

“We have enjoyed a good relationship with Apple for many years, and that continues to be the case,” Pittman also told BusinessWeek. That’s true, but there has definitely been a growing divide between the two in recent months as their interests continue to overlap. This has become a big enough issue that Google CEO Eric Schmidt had to step down from Apple’s Board in August despite assurances that he had no plans to do so leading up to that.

It’s not clear if it is Apple or Google that would have wanted Lala to be less prominently featured in Music Onebox, but it’s certainly possible that neither really liked the placement. After all, in pitching the idea to the record labels, Google likely played up the idea as an alternative to iTunes. The music labels have long sought a viable alternative to Apple’s musical powerhouse that could restore some leveraging power to them. Meanwhile, Apple will now have to foot the bill for Lala streaming — and that means paying the labels for every clip longer than 30-seconds, we hear. So they probably don’t want all those Lala clips being served up either.

Regardless of the reason, Google Music Onebox is now a lot less useful, and that’s too bad.

Update: As some people have noted in the comments, results on searches vary — but it’s important to make sure you’re logged out of your Google account and you clear you cookies. The reason is that Google keeps track of your preferences in a cookie.

[photo: flickr/duncan harris]

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 cash in the bank, meaning the actual purchase price was really $3 million.

That’s in line with recent competitive sales like iLike ($20 million) and iMeem ($1 million). LaLa had plenty of cash in the bank, but they were burning $500k/month, say our sources. There’s just no reason Apple would pay $80 million for the company.

We also believe that LaLa was acquired mostly for the star engineering team and the awesome recent Google deal more than for the product. iTunes in the cloud isn’t something we should hold our breath for. $3 million for top-of Google music results and a top team of engineers makes a lot of sense. $80 million not so much.

LaLa has raised $35 million and was valued at $180 million or so in it’s last round of funding. The reason for the misreports on the $80 million sale may have to do with those numbers. We’ve heard that the purchase price was “forty or fifty cents on the dollar” from one source, meaning 40% or 50% of the $35 million in venture capital the company has raised. But a misunderstanding of what that means could easily have people thinking it was 40% or 50% of the last round valuation, which gets you the $80 million number.

If we get additional sources on this story either way we’ll update. LaLa, which used to love to talk to us, has become scarce when we call or email.

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 isn’t going to be a big win for investors. iMeem has raised at least $25 million (that we’ve been able to track) plus at least another $10 million in debt. But the difficultly in making a free streaming music service work as a business model forced them to make some hard decisions. Earlier this year they renegotiated label contracts and recapitalized the company, bringing in $6 million in fresh capital.

iMeem found a way to survive a few more months. But now they’re under the financial gun again, we’ve heard, and investors aren’t willing to put more capital into the company. But MySpace is stepping in to acquire the company.

What’s in it for MySpace – the acquisition of a seasoned team with lots of experience in music. Plus the iMeem and SNOCAP intellectual property. It’s not clear if the iMeem brand will live on, but iMeem users will certainly be welcome at MySpace, I’m sure.

This is another blow for free streaming music lovers. iMeem and MySpace Music were among the last free streaming services in the U.S. And MySpace Music, we’ve heard, will soon be forced to turn to subscriptions to manage costs.

iMeem was founded six years ago by then 23 year old Dalton Caldwell The first product was social networking via a client application that included file sharing, status messages, etc. It morphed into a music streaming service over time. According to Comscore, iMeem had 16 million unique visitors worldwide in September.

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 pulled from profiles, but that could cover all the data iLike collects about users—their music preferences and recommendations.

Even though iLike is the top music app on Facebook, with 12 million active monthly users, the two companies have been on the outs ever since iLike was picked up for a song by arch-rival MySpace. The recent deal with Google Music to show iLike/MySpace Music results added insult to injury.

This morning some people with the iLike app installed on Facebook received the following notification:

Due to upcoming Facebook changes, your Music data on Facebook won’t show on your profile and you’ll stop getting concert alerts. Take this step to save your music data

To get around these restrictions, iLike is now asking for users’ emails so they can send them concert alerts (which can be a very lucrative source of affiliate revenues) outside of Facebook. But routing these types of alerts through email is not ideal. People don’t want app spam in their inbox.

The app inside Facebook is currently “taking a short time-out for maintenance.” I have asked iLike, MySpace, and Facebook for clarification on the changes, and will update this post when I hear back from them. A few weeks ago, Facebook’s Ethan Beard hinted: “We are making some changes to the profile. We think it should be a great place for users to accurately represent their identity.” Perhaps this is related.

Update: This notification is indeed in response to changes in Facebook’s developer roadmap, which will eliminate two of iLike’s top features: adding music to a profile and personalized concert alerts. So iLike trying to get users to switch to email notifications (outside of Facebook’s control) and new profile tabs. The policy changes are not targeted at iLike specifically.

A Facebook spokesperson clarifies: “We didn’t do anything specific to iLike as the headline implies, and alerts are not going away, they’re simply shifting away from their current channel to ones we think will be more effective for both users and developers.”

MySpace is the big lottery winner here. They bought iLike for $20 million in August. What they got: a talented (literally) team that is starting to fill the executive ranks at MySpace, the biggest music application on Facebook, and, it turns out, a deal with Google that is now sending massive traffic flow directly to MySpace Music.

Our understanding from sources is that MySpace made an offer to iLike without knowing about the Google deal. Supposedly, since iLike was under NDA, all they knew was that iLike had a big partnership opportunity with some big company, nothing more. In hindsight the iLike deal looks smart even without Google. Add that in and it looks absolutely brilliant. I’m no fan of MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta, but I’ll give the man credit here.

Giving Facebook The Benefit Of The Doubt

Facebook decided not to aggresively pursue iLike. They seem to have firmly moved away from any desire to deal with content directly, so this looks less like a mistake and more like a strategic decision.

But one thing is clear. Facebook utterly failed to execute on their music strategy from last year, even while trying to work via a partner application to avoid direct contact with content. Meanwhile, Google stepped in and quickly brought streaming music directly to users, without paying anything at all for it.

iLike CEO and now MySpace exec Ali Partovi, speaking at the launch event last night, didn’t hold any punches against Facebook. He gave huge credit to Google for pulling off a win-win-win-win (labels, google, users, MySpace/LaLa) in the difficult online music space. And he noted that “others have tried or are still trying and have failed miserably.” He was quite clearly referring to Facebook.

The truth is that we don’t know if Facebook flailed on a huge opportunity to get into the Google search stream, or if they just decided they don’t want the hassle of dealing with music directly. We’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. And they certainly had no idea of the Google deal back when they were trying to buy iLike anyway.

Ticketmaster Flubs It

None of Facebook’s excuses (didn’t know about the Google deal, strategically not what they want, etc.) apply to Ticketmaster. The company was a big shareholder in iLike, had a board seat, and certainly new every detail of the Google deal. They could easily have acquired iLike, probably for not much more cash than the $13.3 million they already had invested. But instead they let the company go to MySpace, knowing full well that they were enabling a huge potential competitor.

If Ticketmaster had acquired iLike all that Google music search traffic would be under their control. Click throughs to the iLike site could be monetized through event ticket sales. It would probably be a matter of months, not years, before they got their investment back in additional ticket sales.

And what’s worse is that MySpace now controls all that traffic. MySpace actually has a much more complete worldwide database of concert events than even Ticketmaster has, and they already flow through a lot of traffic to ticket sales at Ticketmaster and competitors. Now that database is combined with iLike’s impressive concert discovery and alert product. When you plug Google search traffic into all of that, its got to be scary for Ticketmaster:

“MySpace has the world’s largest database of live events, and iLike has already built some of the world’s best concert-discovery features available online,” Courtney Holt, president of MySpace Music, wrote in a blog post. “We’re delighted to have implemented the first structured integration of concert data into Google search, and this is only the beginning of our efforts to innovate in the live event space.”

We frankly can’t see any reason at all for Ticketmaster to let iLike go to a potential competitor, particularly with this Google deal locked up. Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff certainly knew what was happening. So why did he make such a huge misstep? Possibly because he’s in the middle of a divestiture of topline assets as part of a merger with Live Nation. Azoff is rumored to be looking for a huge personal payout as part of that deal, and may even be spinning himself off along with assets.

In other words, maybe Azoff couldn’t care less about the future of Ticketmaster.

Key takeaways – Google will integrate new partners as it makes sense. And while MySpace knew about the negotiations between iLike and Google prior to announcing their acquisition of iLike in August, the deal was far from certain. More on that in a subsequent post.

All are below:

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 companies involved have been willing to comment on it until now.

Here’s how the new feature will work: Onebox will let users stream songs directly from Google’s search result page, and will also include additional content like tour information and music videos (the actual content shown will vary depending on the partner — more on that later). Enter a query for “Use Somebody”, and you’re going to see a small ‘play’ button in your search result that lets you stream the Kings of Leon song in its entirety, or buy the song. Clicking on the play button will bring up a small browser window that will immediately start streaming your song. If you enter the name of an artist rather than a song title as your search query, Google will present a handful of popular songs by that artist with multiple ‘play’ buttons.

Here’s what the results page looks like, when multiple songs are being presented:

The new feature is being powered by two entirely different services: Lala, the innovative music site that lets people buy ‘web songs’ for ten cents, and iLike, the popular streaming music and artist hub that was recently acquired by MySpace. In an interesting twist, iLike’s appearance in OneBox will be short-lived — MySpace branded widgets will soon be taking their place. This is an important step in MySpace’s transition to being seen as a media/content hub rather than a pure social network. MySpace is also leveraging some of the new features it has recently rolled out since the iLike acquisition, including its artist dashboard and extensive library of music videos — you’ll be able to jump to a music video for a song directly from MySpace’s Onebox results (this is impressive given that the site only launched those services a week ago).

Likewise, this is also a massive win for Lala. We’ve been big fans of Lala since the site relaunched back in October 2008 with a unique business model that lets users build their music libraries in the cloud for cheap — you can purchase an entire streaming version of an album for around 80 cents, or 10 cents per song. The service’s only problem has been establishing traction, and this will certainly help with that. Expect the service’s userbase to see a big jump as millions of people on Google are exposed to Lala for the first time.

The joint partnership comes with a few quirks. Google will basically be doing a coin toss with each eligible query to determine which service will be serving up the widget. That will help the service distribute load and perhaps leaves the door open for Google to include multiple other music services, but I’m not sure it will provide the best user experience — some users may get confused when a feature in one widget isn’t available in the other.

Google VP of Search Products and User Experience kicked off the event,talking about how Google has expanded its search offerings over time, with Images (2201), Book (2003) and Maps (2007). “Music” is one of Google’s top ten searches of all time, as is “lyrics”. But it hasn’t always been easy to actually find music, which is why Google is looking to offer full song streaming directly from Google.

Google has also partnered with Gracenote to provide full lyric search — if you type in the lyrics from a portion of a song, they’ll identify the song. Song purchasing partners include imeem, Rhapsody, and Pandora, who will help with music discovery.

Google passed the baton off to MySpace, with MySpace Music President Courtney Holt outlining how much growth MySpace Music has seen and how happy the site is to be working with Google. Ali Partovi, iLike’s former CEO (and MySpace’s current SVP Business Development) took the stage, first taking the time to congratulate MySpace on acquiring iLike. He was joking, but what he says has some truth to it: MySpace made an offer on iLike before iLike could talk about the Google partnership, which iLike had been working on for a long time. In other words, MySpace lucked out with the deal.

Lala’s Bill Nguyen next to the stage, saying that Lala has always been about finding music, and then discovering more that you might like. He says that for the last ten years, music has been about business models, not discovery. Once you wind up on Lala, you can follow other users and see what they’re listening to.

The new feature will be gradually rolling out to users, with a small percentage (1-5%) having access today and rolling out gradually over the next couple days to everyone in the US.

Here’s the Lala player:

Here’s MySpace’s widget (you’ll be seeing an iLike widget temporarily, but eventually they’ll shift over to look like this):

Matt Ghering, a product marketing manager at Google, has been one of the people talking to the big four music labels about the new service, we’ve heard from one of our sources. And he has supposedly sent these screenshots of the look and feel of Google Music search to various rights holders and potential partners.

The first screenshot shows how a search result might look on Google for a search for “U2.” A picture of the band is to the left of four streaming options for various songs, and the user has the option of listening via either iLike or LaLa. Click on one of the results, and a player pops up from the services that streams the song, along with an option to purchase the song for download.

We don’t know if this is the final look of the service, but it’s definitely something Google has been sending to people to show them what it might look like.

More thoughts on this later as we digest all the information coming in. But one thing is clear – this is a huge win for LaLa and iLike. Both will get massive flow from this deal. And as much as we criticize MySpace, their acquisition of iLike is starting to look sort of brilliant.

Search Results:

iLike Player:

LaLa Player:

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 MySpace profiles of new execs because every once in a while we find a new exec hire that hasn’t actually ever used the service.

All the new execs appear to have MySpace profiles. But just before I signed out of the last one i checked, Ali Partovi, a video he uploaded caught my eye. He says “Here’s a little video I just made for the MySpace sales conference next week (Oct 13-15). They told everybody, “make a video showing how MySpace is YOUR space”…..”

Anyway, meet your new SVP Business Development at MySpace, who is most definitely not buttoned up and boring. We’ve also added this video to his Crunchbase profile. Because we can never, ever let him live this down:

MYSpace-ali partovi
http://mediaservices.myspace.com/services/media/embed.aspx/m=63778578,t=1,mt=video
ali | MySpace Videos

MySpace acquired streaming music service iLike in August for $20 million.

Other recent MySpace hires include Mark Rosenbaum as CFO and Alex Maghen as CTO (he was formerly CTO of MySpace Music, now he heads technology at MySpace proper as well).

Below is MySpace’s bio about Stirratt, who served as EVP of Digital Advertising at MTV before joining MySpace:

Prior to MySpace, Stirratt served as Executive Vice President of Digital Advertising at MTV Networks where she oversaw advertising sales and strategy, ad operations, Digital Fusion-integrated marketing, and Tribes, the company’s third-party vertical affiliate network. Before MTV, Nada served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of advertising sales at Advertising.com. Earlier in her career, Stirratt worked in ad sales and business development for such entertainment brands as AOL-Time Warner, Moviefone, Allure and Cosmopolitan.

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 that rumor, up pops a Facebook status message from Mark Zuckerberg: “Spotify is so good.”

Wondering about the timing? Don’t. Facebook investor Li Ka-Shing is now a big stockholder in Spotify, too.

And it was clear that as soon as iLike turned down Facebook and accepted MySpace’s offer, Facebook would have to make some new decisions on music strategy.

iLike has always been the de facto music application on Facebook. A year ago Facebook named them one of only two “Great Apps” that would get preferential treatment on the platform.

But all that has changed. The Great Apps program was shuttered, and there’s no way Facebook is going to continue to shower the love on iLike.

So out with the old, in with the new. See ya, iLike. Helloooo, Spotify. So when are you launching in the U.S.?

Music plays a large role in our lives. Since the web now plays an even bigger part, combining the two together has become unavoidable. The greatest thing about this powerful duo is that you don’t need to spend a lot of time searching for music you like  — just use this nifty guide list and you’ll find just about everything you need to enjoy hours of good music. The sound quality changes from service to service, but overall, it’s good enough for regular web usage.

Please note that this is a list of services that you can use over the net without the need to download anything to your computer. This is why I’m not listing any P2P software: i.e., Spotify, as well the fact that most of us can’t really test it or use it for all that matter. This is also only the first half of this guide; part two will include more web music players (including MySpace Music, Streamzy, and others) as well as music search engines and services that make it easy to share songs on Twitter and other social sites.

Music Recommendations:

Pandora is a service that can be used only in a specific locale, this one being within the U.S. Luckily, I had the chance to test the service when it was first released and became available to everyone. Launched way back in July 2005, the project had been in the initial testing phases for five years prior to launch date. Pandora recommends music to you by matching similar musical attributes. All you really need to do is choose an artist or a band you like, and Pandora will do the rest. Pandora delivers high quality 128Kbps audio streams, offering recommendations similar to the artists you have chosen. Pandora’s player looks like a radio, you can open up to 100 stations and navigate through them quickly. Registering for Pandora will provide you with a free account (advertising-supported). Free Pandora accounts will play up to  40 hours of music for free per month, you also have the option to pay 99 cents for unlimited listening hours for the rest of that month, or pay $36 to upgrade Pandora for one year. If you want to download music from Pandora, you can do it through iTunes or Amazon. You can see our past Pandora coverage here.

With almost 3 million unique visitors a day, Last.fm is one of the most powerful social music communities on the Web today. Like Pandora, the service allows you to enjoy music that you like, but unlike Pandora, Last.fm analyses what you and your friends listen to and like, and then suggests more music based on that analysis. When you recommend music to a friend or you tag it, or you write about it, or simply just listen to it – you shift the song’s importance on the site, and will in turn get recommended to more people. Based on the music you’ve already listened to, Last.fm will recommend new music you might like, as well as suggest other users with a similar music taste to yours, which you might be interested in friending, and you can also easily communicate with them. If you live outside the U.S., U.K. or Germany, you can listen with a free 30-track trial or subscribe for a low price of $3/month for unlimited radio streaming. (Launched in 2002!)

This is how BlogMusik, looked in 2006, and this is how Deezer (formerly BlogMusik) looks today – pretty impressive change, don’t you think? The French-based service is one of the largest and happens to also be a very successful music recommendation search engine. Once registered here, you can create your personal profile and reach the Deezer community. You can create playlists, send messages to your contacts, leave comments, add artists and albums to your favorites, and more. But here’s what I like the most – The SmartRadio, which is an intelligent radio that automatically generates 3 hours(!) of continuous listening based on one artist – completely free. Priceless! You can see our past coverage of Deezer here.

I think the first Adobe AIR application that I ever tried was Finetune. Finetune provides you with the most interesting new playlists of related music from your choice of artists. Besides the site’s community where you can browse, listen to music, create a profile, connect with other users and more, Finefune also has some cool feautures to complete their suite, and each tool gives you an extraordinary music experience. Take for example the Finetune Wii project (which can be played also over the web), it’s a great sight and sound for the eyes and ears. Just enter an artist’s name and Finetune will create a playlist with similar music that will play for hours. Best of all it’s free, and you also get an iPhone, Facebook and a Desktop app that all sync with your music playlist, no matter where you play it from. You can see our past coverage of FineTune here.

Also worth mentioning in this same topic group are, of course: Ilike.com (acquired by Myspace), and music.strands.tv

Independent Music:

Amie Street is a home for musicians. The service allows music fans to discover new and independent music. Visitors at the site can search for new music based on genre, region, or recommendations. Fans can also search for music according to its price -  Amie Street is actually the only marketplace where listeners determine the price of the music. How does it work? Every song is originally priced free or very inexpensive and increases in price, up to 98 cents, as more and more users purchase it. Musicians then get 70% of the revenue from each sale. Additionally, Amie Street matches you with music that you might like, for example: I couldn’t locate Coldplay on the site, but I got more than 70 results that sound similar to the band. Obviously, this exposes me to music that I’ve never heard before, which is always a welcomed experience. You can see our past coverage of Amie Street here.

Why is Jamendo one of my favorite music services? It offers the largest catalog of music under Creative Commons licenses – worldwide. And, not only are all of the albums free to download, there’s also a large chance you won’t know any of the artists. If you already have an open mind about music, surely it won’t stop you from listening to some new albums, right? The best way to find music at this site is to search by the genre tags. Found something that you like? You can review, comment, rate, share and as I’ve said download it for free.  The service is available in seven languages, and has an iPhone app that you can download for free. Business model? Yes they have one too.

SoundCloud is by far the best looking music application there is today. It offers a great interface, a great user-experience and above these all, great music! SoundCloud lets music professionals receive, send and distribute their music. The service allows professionals (and non-professionals) to exchange, and follow music and musicians at the site. It’s a full community where people can easily communicate with each other based on shared tastes, but it is also a place where musicians can store and showcase their music using high quality standards. With the free account, you can only upload 5 tracks maximum per month, but if you are an industry fanatic and you find this plan to be somewhat lacking, you can check the pro page for packages that are more suitable to your needs. See our past coverage here.

TheSixtyOne allows artists to upload their songs and lets thousands of listeners decide whether they like it or not. The most popular songs hit the front page. Think about it as a Digg for music, the more people heart a song, the higher it goes. The site connects musicians and fans, giving them all the tools to communicate with each other. For artists, it’s good place to promote their work. For anyone else, it’s a wonderful place to discover and support new music.

Create & Listen to Playlist:

I’ve never been very much of a Project Playlist fan, but I have to say it’s a good service. Ultimately, it’s a community based on playlists. You don’t have to register to be able to listen to the music, but once you do, you can start building your playlist and enjoy more features such as the Playlist IM, which is a chat system similar to Facebook where you can connect your ‘playlist’ friends or even friends from AIM, Facebook, Yahoo Messenger, etc. What else? You can write blog entries, upload photos, privately connect with other members, browse thousands of other music playlists, comment, share, and much more. My guess is that people use this site mostly to share their playlist on their blog/site or social network. Playlist allows you to grab a playlist code and embed it anywhere you want. One thing that bugs me though is that the member’s search feature is missing. Today, when everything is so connected to your identity, this is a must have feature. On the other hand, I was impressed to see they saved my playlist from 2006…

Jiwa.fm allows you to create personalize playlist and share it in the Jiwa.fm community or with friends & family. As a member, you are able to share, exchange, and explore music. You can also expand your tastes with the SmartRadio tool. I found this service to be unique in a way because no matter what you are doing at the site, it won’t prevent you from listening to your playlist, it just plays in the background. Amazingly, when you click on an artist from within a mixed artists playlist, it will automatically create an album playlist of that artist. You might find the site to be a bit cluttered at first time, but once you get it, it works like a charm – highly recommended.

At Jogli, you don’t really need to create a playlist – they create it for you. Think about it as a giant web-based CD store where you can search for an artist, see all of his/her albums, and then listen to them exactly as listed in original CD  Let’s take Michael Jackson for example: Here you can find all his discography, and listen to his CDs one by one. Clicking on the button ‘Play Radio’ will open a radio station generated from music you might like from similar artists. As a registered member, you are able to save playlists, write reviews, and more. You can also import your playlists to Last.fm or iTunes to make it a video playlist. Check out our past coverage of Jogli here.

MixTube would have been better and easier if they allowed you to search for Youtube videos on their site to create a playlist. But no, you have to supply them with a Youtube URL, which means, you’ll have to go directly to Youtube, search for a song, then copy-paste that song URL back into MixTube. Thus, I found it to be frustrating. But looking at the bright side, you can always search for someone else’s playlist, and save yourself time and agony. One word about the Youtube music integration – lots of services use it, but unfortunately, it doesn’t offer you much control of your playlist, and what plays today, may not play tomorrow..

Lala is another great music store/playlist maker that we’ve covered extensively since the site relaunched last year. It allows users to listen to any song they want one time. If you want to listen to a song more than that, you buy a 10 cent ‘web song’ that lets you stream the song from the cloud as many times as you want (you can also purchase a full download of the song as you would from iTunes or Amazon). The site has a great integrated music player and a variety of pre-made playlists built by other users.

Worth mentioning: Imeem, and Maestro.fm

Music Visualization:

There’s no doubt in my mind that Musicovery has a strong following of avid users. The site is an interactive and personalized webradio enabling its users to generate in a few clicks a musical program adapted to the various listening situations and their preferences. Their unique mood matrix proposes a relationship between music and mood in an ergonomic and attractive manner. I’ve submitted this item about the service to Digg in 2006 and it’s good to see the site still works . But things have changed. You have limited navigation if you’re not a pro user ($15/3 months or $48/12 months), but once you are – the sky is the limit. In any case, this service will blow you away.

CitySounds.fm is perhaps just a mashup site, but it’s a good one! CitySounds.fm collects music from SoundCloud and pictures from Flickr to create a wonderful music experience from a single page. You can listen to the latest music from cities all around the world. At the top are the most active cities and the list is constantly changing as new music is being created.

Web-Radio:

Very similar to Last.fm in concept, Jango allows you to create your own custom radio stations and share them with friends. Just type in what you want to hear – and your station will immediately play the music you want along with similar favorites of other Jango users who share your tastes. You can customize your stations further by adding more artists and rating songs. Each artist get a page, containing the web-radio, the music playlist, biographies, events list, comments from members at the site, and fan list for easy communication. The service claims to be legal and says it pays royalties due to all labels/artists every time a song is played. Moreover, Jango runs a program called Jango Airplay. This program gives emerging artists an unprecedented opportunity to be proactively exposed to the millions of visitors at the site. See our past coverage of Jango here.

RadioBeta is an efficient way to locate radio stations in your area or around the globe. You can search stations by geography, genre, band, language or tags. You can listen without signing up, or you can log in and create your personal dashboard with favorite stations that  you can then listen to on a daily basis. We mostly hear radio on the go, but now you can easily track your favorite radio stations on the web. All the radio stations are public so you aren’t asked to pay anything to use the site.

OK, TheRadio is also one of my favorites because of its simplicity. Entering an artist or a genre gets you custom channel, but if you go over the channel listing, you will find much more interesting suggestions. I don’t know about you but I actually like when someone else picks the music as long is it in the range of my request. Anyway, TheRadio does a great job on finding music that I like – it simply works.

Aupeo fits in the Recommendation list as well as this category. The service lets you experience music in a fours different ways: by Stations, Artist, Mood, and Personal. The Stations area is pretty limited if you don’t have a pro account, but you can still get the feel of it. In the Artist zone, you enter your favorite name and choose from a variety stations suggested. The coolest way is the Mode area, which plays music based on your chosen mode. These stations are created by music experts, says Aupeo.  The Personal station streams music based on your music behavior at the site. Overall, very intensive and powerful!

Worth mentioning: Tun3r, Mugasha, and  Play.fm

That’s it for Part 1 of this music guide. If you have any other suggestions related to these groups, you are more than welcome to add them in the comments. In the next part of this post, I’ll offer the best options for Music search engines, Music web-players, Twitter-Music craziness, and more. Stay tuned!

Image by RossinaBossioB on Flickr.

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 or a canceled iLike board meeting. “I have been doing deals for 15 years now, and this was one of the smoother sailing deals,” says Van Natta.

Both iLike’s employees and management team will now work for MySpace, but will remain an autonomous unit based in Seattle. Throughout the conference call, Van Natta’s first, he stressed his desire to make MySpace as open as possible and he cast the iLike acquisition as complementary to MySpace in that it is a distributed application across many social networks. “People want to interact in many places. We will take that strategy and apply it across the Web,” he said. Later he reiterated, “The thrust of this is distributed web, how can we serve users in a more distributed way.”

The implication, of course, being that rival Facebook is not so open (although Mark Zuckerberg would beg to differ). Van Natta couldn’t hep but give his former employer a not-so-subtle dig: “We are a much more open network. People can explore each other interests, much more so than on other social networks.”

One of the big questions around the deal was why isn’t iLike becoming part of MySpace Music. Van Natta addressed this issue by suggesting that iLike’s recommendation system will be applied to other content on MySpace, including videos and games. He also confirmed that there are no plans at this time to introduce music streaming from MySpace Music into iLike, but he did say that the two businesses would work together to grow the event ticketing business.

My full notes are below (I’ve bolded parts for emphasis):

Owen Van Natta: This is the first time I am speaking with you since taking on the role of CEO a few months ago. In that time we have restructured and hired some talented people. This is an official announcement that MySpace has entered into an agreement acquired iLike

This decision based on 3 things:

1. need to innovate. Music is part of people’s lives. We strengthen our ability to innovate in this area.

2. shared belief in open content distribution. People want to interact in many places. We will take that strategy and apply it across the Web.

3. Great people. Expect to see continued news about great talent coming to MySpace.

MySpace is a place where people can broadcast, discover, and express themselves. Where culture gets defined through social experiences around entertainment. By combining two models We believe that what iLike has created is not limited to music, can be extended to video and games. Because we see it as bigger than music, we are making this apart from MySpace Music.

iLike’s founders (CEO Ali Partovi, President Hadi Partovi and CTO Nat Brown) will remain and will stay in Seattle. In addition 26 employees joining MySpace.

Q&A

Q: Any guidance on new applications we can expect?

Owen: We will take all the great things iLike has meant for users and extend all the things MySPace does with users and extend that. You will be able to see a broader experience.

Q: How is this purchase going to affect iLike’s partnership with Facebook?

Owen: iLike is part of many social networks. My expectation is that social networks will be thrilled that we are going to be making iLike an even richer experience in their environments.

Q: deal terms and how integrated into MySpace music

Owen: We have not disclosed deal terms. iLike has a great product we will continue to extend, a phenomenal management team. Allowing that team to operate autonomously is an important part of it.

Q: reports that iLike was poised to offer its own music store? Is this a defensive move to shortcut that?

Owen: No, the thrust of this is distributed web, how can we serve users in a more distributed way.

Q: Will streaming from MySpace Music be offered through iLike? Also there was speculation that the deal was delayed because of tax issues or a canceled iLike board meeting. Can you comment on that?

Owen: first Q about extending MySpace Music into iLike, we have no plans to do that at this time. On your second question, I read some of the reports, I have been doing deals for 15 years now, and this was one of the smoother sailing deals.

Owen: No delay

Q: Update on MySpace music

Owen: MySpace music has been doing extremely well, 1,000% growth since launch, 200% year over year in usage. It will continue to serve users for many years to come.

Q: What does MySpace get from iLike?

Q: For example,If you look at the recommendation engine that users get on iLike, that is something you could apply elsewhere in MySpace. iLike is a big generator of ticket sales, something MySpace Music has started, that will accelerate, a better experience combined than either could on its own.

Q: If iLike develops its own music store, will that hurt your relationship with Amazon?

Owen: No, we don’t expect it to. iLike has just launched an MP3 purchasing functionality on its platform. Clearly users are buying music in a number of different ways. We want to serve users

Q: Would there be better margins?

Owen: What we are really focused on with MySpace Music, and iLike is also, is the discovery, and the socialization around that content. We are a much more open network. People can explore each other interests, much more so than on other social networks.

Q: Will iLike management team have any broader role?

Owen: First and foremost we want to make sure we don’t disrupt anything they are doing. They have a lot of things in development. This is a very talented group of executives, and the entire team. leveraging that talent more broadly across MySpace is something we will definitely pursue.

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).

MYSPACE announcement—PRESS CALL INVITE

WHAT: MySpace invites you to attend a press conference call today to be briefed on breaking company news.

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 negotiations were progressing smoothly last we heard.

What we want to know is what will happen if Facebook now decides to cut off iLike, which is the most popular music app on the rival social network.

More details soon, as we cover this live.

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 bona fide written offers to buy the company. At least one other large company expressed interest to Allen & Company, iLike’s advisors to the deal.

Activision Blizzard and Microsoft have been incorrectly rumored to have been seriously interested in the company, however.

iLike ultimately chose MySpace based partly on price, and partly on a fit with the buyer, sources say. Facebook was largely off the table due to building distrust between the companies.

Also, multiple sources tell us that the deal negotiations with MySpace have been moving along quickly and are now virtually complete. There was no last minute canceled iLike board meeting (in fact no board meeting was scheduled), and no hiccups over tax issues on the deal.

“People are literally making this drama up,” said one source.

It’s also clear that the relatively low valuation that iLike commanded in this sale was due less to their performance and more to uncertainty created by Facebook over their future on the Facebook Platform.

iLike is profitable and has 50+ million registered users. Unlike other music services they don’t have crushing streaming payments to make to labels because, well, they don’t stream music.

They are certainly now in a position to stand on their own as a company over the long term. Except that ongoing uncertainty over Facebook’s intentions to compete with them directly as well as regular changes to the rules around Facebook Platform mean they could get cut off at any time.

In other words, this is less about iLike’s financial and user growth and more about the value of users from Facebook Platform. Facebook seems unwilling to let Platform partners get too big. There continues to be no clear line as to where Facebook’s internal apps end and Platform begins.

We continue to expect the deal to be closed and announced shortly. And we eagerly await Facebook’s response to their main competitor, MySpace, suddenly owning (the de facto) Facebook Music.