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 going to be a must-have. You can grab the free app here.
Using the app is pretty straightforward: it allows you to view all venues in your area, with concert listings for events that are going on in the near future or further down the line. But it also includes a number of nifty features that the iPhone didn’t previously support. One of these is automated personalization — the application can look at your iPhone or iPod Touch’s library, and determine which artists you should probably be following (though you’re free to adjust the list on your own). Once you’ve found a concert you’d like to attend, the app includes links to sites where you can purchase tickets. Whenever you’ve got an alert, you’ll see a message pop up on your iPhone (much like an SMS message would) regardless of if you have the application open.
Now, iLike has previously offered a more basic application on the iPhone but it was much more basic — if you forgot to check the application manually, you wouldn’t know that your band was coming to town or their tickets were about to go on sale. And the old app didn’t have the automatic artist detection, either.
The one thing I wish the app did have was an option to not only determine which artists you’d like to follow based on their appearance in your music library, but also to take into account the number of times you actually listen to those artists. Obviously this would make things a bit more complicated, but there are plenty of artists I have on my iPhone simply because I feel obligated to fill the device’s storage space to the brim. In any case, iLike’s current suggestion system will be plenty helpful for most people. You can see it in action in the video embed below.
Alongside today’s launch, iLike is also releasing some of the initial stats for its custom iPhone app platform, which it launched in May. Over 250 artists have now used the platform to build their own applications, including Reba McEntire, Ingrid Michaelson, and Rusted Root. The applications allow artists to build rich iPhone apps — including music, video, concert listings, and Twitter feeds — with a minimum of effort It also taps into iLike’s syndication platform, which means content can be delivered to iLike’s 50 million fans easily.
iLike’s Local Concert Demo
http://content.screencast.com/users/hadip/folders/Jing/media/7556d0cf-27a9-4912-9be8-502b14936166/jingswfplayer.swf
iLike’s Artist Platform Demo
http://content.screencast.com/users/hadip/folders/Jing/media/ceafee3a-581d-4260-8578-70006b125139/jingswfplayer.swf