ILike is a new iTunes plug-in that will launch tomorrow and leverages free music from independent musicians at GarageBand.com to supplement its otherwise typical recommendations. ITunes plug-ins are becoming increasingly common but music recommendations are particularly frustrating if you have to either pay full price for a song or launch another application to get it.
Integration of free, independent recommended music is the primary point of differentiation between iLike and competitors like Last.fm, MyStrands (disclosure: TC 8 party sponsor) and Qloud. ILike is available for Windows and Mac, it has some social networking features, a MySpace widget and it makes purchasing songs easy.
The ability to drag and drop manual recommendations to friends, the display of friends’ online or offline presence and the public/private options for user data are all very nice in iLike. The URL is certainly a good one.
The company has some heavyweight backing, having taken $2.5 million in funding from Vinod Khosla and Bob Pittman.
In our tests recommendations appeared tied to artists, not songs and that is not ideal. There’s probably not a shortage of iTunes recommendations plug-ins in the world and it’s going to be increasingly difficult to stand above the crowd. The company says it wants to move beyond affiliate revenue from song sales and into event notification and affiliate concert ticket sales. I’m sure everyone wants to get into that.
I’m not sure that free music from indendent musicians is a viable mass market value proposition. While user generated video can draw a crowd, I think that’s because consuming video is a short term relationship. People listen to the same music over and over again, and while many of us may be interested in discovering new music similar to our existing tastes - the lower production quality and lack of familiarty with independent music makes it less popular for more reasons than just limited distribution. Most “independent music” is not very good. Videos that are not very good are much more tollerable than music that is not very good. GarageBand.com is online right now, in case you’re open to evaluating the music there.
In short, iLike has a good URL, good backing, a nice interface and good usability but insufficient differentiation from other options to be a clear winner.
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Very intersting senor.
How could you say people don’t want music by unsigned artists? Have you heard of MySpace? Heck, Wired even says “Radio is dead” because they don’t have enough new music by the kind of musicians that are breaking on the Internet
I’m beta testing it : believe me, its the best thing since iTunes itself. Fantastic service. The songs by free artists it downloads for me gets it right 4/5 times. That sidebar is just too cool anyways.
Last.fm : eat iLike’s dust
Robert: I believe he was saying that people don’t want subpar songs, and unfortunately independent artists are many, and the greater number means it is harder to find quality songs.
I’m all for discovering new, unsigned bands, and you’ll find a very large percentage of indie rock/pop in my huge song collection. However, there’s a lot of crap to wade through to find the true gems by independent artists, which is unfortunate. Now if iLike were to have a rating system (or GarageBand) and set a filter to only show those with a good rating, perhaps this will work out nice, but that would likely also limit the amount of free songs they could offer during recommendations.
I was also invited to the beta. Its a great toolbar, site and service. I like Last.fm too but iLike is easier and cleaner than anything else I’ve tried. Great site!
Hey there, I’m the CEO of iLike.com (and GarageBand).
In reply to Matt Burris (”Now if iLike were to have a rating system and set a filter to only show those with a good rating…”): That’s *exactly* what iLike has: a giant community, GarageBand.com, where listeners rate and tag thousands of songs. Only the top-rated songs are recommended by iLike.
Not all music is good, just as not all blogs are good. But add community filtering to find the gems that match my personal tastes, and it’s a different story. Try it and judge for yourself.
Unfortunately, the TechCrunch writer didn’t judge the music. Instead he hypothesized about “lower production quality” and jumped to conclude, “I’m not sure that free music from indendent musicians is a viable mass market value proposition.”
I was also dismayed that TechCrunch focused on “free indy music” and skipped over iLike’s primary function: its social features.* iLike’s primary goal is to facilitate discovering music through your friends. For example, iLike is the only service that lets you easily see “what are my friends listening to that I don’t have?”
Ultimately, I think finding new music based on what our friends are listening to may be more effective than any recommendation system — and certainly more effective than letting the major labels tell us what to like, as the TechCrunch writer would apparently have us do.
all the best,
Ali Partovi
CEO, iLike.com
* (Note: The writer did commend iLike’s “drag and drop manual recommendations to friends” — but this feature doesn’t actually exist in iLike, or any iTunes plugin for that matter.)
“Most “independent music” is not very good.”
Wow. That’s a seriously unfair and untrue statement. Perhaps what you meant to say was that most independent production is not as slick as label production. The music itself, frankly, is often better and more real than anything on the charts. I’m not an indie musician, but in just the last couple of years I’ve found a fountain of music that I love that will probably be never aired on the radio.
I really enjoy your blog and you normally make more informed and balanced statements than this so I just had to put my 2 cents in.
reminds me of http://blog.wired.com/music/20.....ml#listen1
I think this is a really good analysis, Marshall. Great perspective.
So when will Apple start going after web sites and products with “i” as a prefix like they are doing with “Pod”? Can you go for a trademark of “i”
Indie / unsigned music deserves tools like this, and much more actually.
For music lovers - it seems to be a very nice app.
Ali - we like to call this particular “techcrunch writer” by his name, Marshall.
ok! Marshall it is
Indy as in the Indy 500???? Ooooohhhh, you mean indie….
I’m not sure about this iListen. The masses seem to listen to the same crap so if you wanted to discover anything good that is not popular it won’t make it to the top of the iListen charts. Also there doesn’t seem to be a way to look through categories of music styles… Don’t know.
I disagree with Marshall.
I like ‘iLike”.
The only problem I have with it is that it is tied 100% to Garage Band. Why not open that up, Ali? We at http://www.projectopus.com would love to be a part of iLike, as would purevolume I am sure, et al. You have someting useful and clueful here, don’t muck it up by keeping it closed.
All I can say is wow. As a musician and music fan, I’m just thrilled to see things like this happening. What most people don’t realize is that technology is making the production of quality songs easier and cheaper every year. And the lower barrier to entry has sprung a wealth of new great music in the Independent ranks.
Ali, I’m surprised that you didn’t explain the filtering mechanism on Garageband. But since I’m such a fan of your site, I’ll help you out.
Ladies and gentlemen, I encourage you to go to Garageband and sample some of the free music there. It’s simple and easy. If you go to the chart pages, pick a genre of music you like and take a listen to the top 5 or so songs in that genre. Those tunes represent the current best of the best on the site. If you find one that isn’t compelling, isn’t polished and would not be a candidate for radio airplay, I’ll eat my hat. It’s my favorite Dallas Mavericks hat. So, this is not to be taken lightly.
Ali, great job with iLike. I look forward to great things.
Michael Schaefer
Texas Mojo
Hi all,
I am the CEO of http://www.pixpix.net. PixPix.net also do social music network through friends. I am glad that there are a lot of push in this direction. We all should push toward a fair playing field where famous artist are competing at an equal playing field with independent musicians. I am still not sure if the friend recommend thing will work because my friend and I have very different taste in music. It may be better to build a community that weed out all the poor music. The rest is decent music that we all can listen to depending on our mood.
By the way Ali, great idea on the iTunes plug-in. Maybe we will build one too.
Nick