iLike.com, an online music sharing and discovery service, shut down all operations on February 7, 2012. The shutdown came as a result of iLike’s inability to keep up with the competition in the ever-growing social media music market.
At the time of its release, iLike was a revolutionary service that allowed for the integration of free music streaming and social networking through a Facebook application. This application enabled fans to follow an artist’s new music releases and tour dates as they become available. The application tracked users’ listening habits and used this data to make recommendations on other artists or events one might find interesting.
In 2009, iLike continued to grow when the service released a new mobile app that enabled users to track concerts. That same year, the company partnered with Google to include streaming song clips in search results. However, even with the new mobile app and the partnership with Google, iLike was still unable to generate enough revenue, and the service was acquired by MySpace in August 2009 in a $20 million deal.
iLike is the latest online music service to shut its doors after failing to adapt and survive in this growing yet complicated niche market. Napster, a once controversial but popular peer-to-peer music service, merged with Rhapsody in December. Apple purchased LaLa’s streaming service in 2009 to operate its cloud platform, but eventually shut down the service.
Before its demise, iLike’s Artist application for Facebook was receiving just 4,000 daily average users (DAU) and 150,000 monthly average users (MAU), according to AppData.com. In comparison, the top Facebook application for music artists, BandPage by RootMusic, receives 1.5 million DAU and 31.7 million MAU.
Spotify, the top music streaming service in the genre, currently averages 5.6 million DAU and 14.5 million MAU. TicketNews recently discussed the integration of Ticketmaster’s Facebook application with Spotify to make event recommendations based on users’ listening habits.
The collaboration between Spotify and Ticketmaster provides consumers with an all-in-one social music and ticketing destination. The app uniquely uses a Facebook user’s Spotify history and geographic location to make concert recommendations, while conveniently providing a way to purchase tickets and share purchases and seat location with friends.
With record labels placing high economic demands on music subscription services, Spotify’s partnership with Ticketmaster provides the ticket seller with more ways to generate revenue. Of course, only time will tell if Spotify will share the same fate as the once innovative iLike.
