iLike now integrates with iPhone, social networks

May 12, 2009 | Paul Boutin | Comments | |

Any rock star knows you’ve got to have an iPhone app, a Twitter account, a YouTube presence, MySpace, hi5, and Facebook pages, not to mention Bebo and Orkut. And to keep all your information across those sites in sync, apparently you now need music-discovery site iLike’s new iLike Artist Dashboard . It lets any of iLike’s 300,000 artists publish simultaneously to a global set of social networks, as well as to a custom iPhone app, such as country band Lady Antebellum’s LadyA app.

“When we started out, we felt there were good things about MySpace Music and good things about iTunes,” iLike CEO Ali Partovi said in a phone interview Tuesday. “We now offer comparable or better features across Facebook, Orkut, hi5 or Bebo. Artists can control more of their MySpace presence through our new dashboard.” The dashboard also lets artists publish to their own websites. That simplifies the most tedious and error-prone part of being a band: Tour dates. “They’re a pain,” Partovi said. “Having to enter the same data multiple times in multiple places.”

All this is great for the newly reunited Asia — ooh, they’re in town July 2! — but what does this do for you the music fan? Partovi seemed surprised that I didn’t know this: If you install iLike’s iTunes plugin , it can connect to Facebook Music, which is actually iLike, and let you know when artists you like are on tour or have new releases.

By the way iLike integrates with Ticketmaster, which took a 25% stake in the company in 2006. So it would’ve been nice if it had  automatically bought me a ticket to U2 in Los Angeles while I was too busy writing to pounce on one. That’s a service whose fee I’d gladly pay.

Next Story: Streamezzo raises $5.1 million for cross-platform mobile apps technology
Previous Story: Roundup: Big Intel fine coming, startups decide to cut or spend, first Tweet from space and more

Bookmark and Share

Tags: ,

Photo of Paul Boutin

About the Author, Paul Boutin

Paul (paul@venturebeat.com) covers Apple & the iPhone, social networks & social media, digital music & video, and any crazy Internet story. Paul wrote and edited for Valleywag from 2006-2008, after several years with Wired magazine and Slate. He writes regularly for The New York Times' technology section and sometimes for Wired and The Wall Street Journal. He studied computer science at MIT in the early 1980s, and worked as a software developer and network administrator for 15 years before becoming a professional writer. Follow him on Twitter at @paulboutin, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Interesting article...very nice...! Greats
  • Gregg Rhinedorf
    Cool, iLike is definitely proving itself and is trying to shed all "little brother" stigma to the Pandora's of the world. Nice job guys.

    I wonder if this is similar to this new jamWee.com website? They claim to have an iPhone app launching soon with similarities. Little confused because their twitter page suggest that they have had meetings with Microsoft. oh well
  • I finally got around to put some thoughts together about iPhone apps for bands .. in short, I think the idea is cool, but i dont think it'll stick.

    http://bit.ly/RqNYW