Facebook’s Pages feature, which debuted only five weeks ago, is beginning to gain significant traction on  MySpace’s four-year-old music platform,  with some interesting results.
Based on a sample of MySpace artist Top Tens in…

Ian’s comments and question are also spot on. Will iLike go the route of allowing other apps to function inside of theirs, or are they just another walled garden trying to quickly transplant the seedlings from the current gardens whose walls are finally coming down?

This is an fascinating development in the online music space. iLike has now morphed from an app on Facebook’s platform, to a fully-fledged platform across social networks. With the Universal Artist Dashboard, you’re allowing artists to manage their presence across social networks and desktop media players. This transforms the interface between artists and their fans, the way they communicate with each other. We see this as a landmark shifting of the boundaries between app and platform, and a significant increase in the value iLike offers musicians and fans.

Our question to you (as a company focusing on live music with a competitive app in the works): Will you allow the artists to choose the apps they use on their Universal Artist Dashboard? If iLike becomes the single way that artists manage their presence on the internet, will this Dashboard be restricted to iLike apps? Or will you open up your platform to 3rd party apps as Facebook has done, allowing artists to select the apps that best suit their needs? Will there a mechanism that allows the best apps to emerge virally, for example by showing which have been explicitly added by artists.

Obviously from our perspective, openness is better. Songkick focuses exclusively on live music: getting the most comprehensive listings, displaying all available ticket options. Facebook allowed app developers to focus on their core competencies while taking advantage of the incredible infrastructure Facebook built. Will you do the same? We strongly believe that by allowing competition to flourish, the best solutions rise to the top.

We would then see the best music recommendation widget, the best music distribution widget, the best concert widget, and a truly ground-breaking platform for music.

Ian Hogarth
CEO Songkick

Check out http://www.qbox.com. This site will be an disruptive innovation in the music industry, I believe.

WebCurrents

Jeff Huber from Google said “The web is the platform…” and I take this advice to heart when I advise artists. I think some of these new propositions for music are great, but my advice is holding at this: make your own blog and use these other sites to drive traffic to your own blogsite / website.

For example: I had this artist ditch MySpace (http://www.mysp....com/jediahband – click to see what we did) and set up a SquareSpace account (simple simple stuff) instead.

I asked the band to stop fake-friending and go back to making music, had the manager go out and find sponsors, and I am pushing FREE music using inexpensive Google banners.

Artists, you will be able to go direct to consumer without expending lots of time on every new “platform” that pops up (the flavour of the month). Pick and choose the widgets you need; have your manager learn to use AdSense and Amazon Affiliate; and make him/her go out and find local sponsors.

If your manager is only capable of booking your shows, then find someone that reads TechCrunch.

I think building a network of “friends” within a branded ecosystem is overrated. If you make great music, real friends will find your own site and you will be the beneficiary of the traffic.

Once again, some of these new tools are great, but think wisely about how you use them and your time. Setting up a quick profile and using these sites to drive traffic to your own blog/site is my 2007.11 recommendation.

RADIO 2 UK WAS SAYING THAT YOU CAN ONLY HAVE 5K FRIENDS ON FACEBOOK PAGE BEFORE IT GOES A BIT RUBBISH AND STOPS WORKING. SO BACK TO THE DISCUSSION IF THIS IS THE CASE THEN ILIKE PAGE PAGE HAS TOO BE THE LEAD?

http://apps.fac...m/avrillavigne/

Sigh…

May I note that the title implying a “Battle” between iLike and Facebook might be a tad over-stated. After all, we’ve been working closely with the fine folks at Facebook not only to develop the new apps for the new Pages, but also to auto-create the new Pages in question.

We couldn’t be happier with the new opportunities this opens for us. The bigger “battle” for us is the battle to keep up with the traffic

Ali Partovi, CEO, iLike inc

Let’s not forget, that artists need to eat.

I think most of this conversation presented here is moot; the next generation of music “social network” that wins will balance the best of both media playback capability and most importantly, monetization. That’s why i think companies like imeem are so promising. Aritsts, in theory, have a direct incentive to invest time and effort into their imeem profiles, as eyeballs directly translates into monetization.

But for the sake of argument: facebook has all the tools, infrastructure and engineers to create this killer platform. However, what they don’t have is, a focused group of music lovers and artists that would account for the micro contextual details of fans, and especially artists. So, in this context, i like ilike’s odds of winning out.

what happen if Facebook decide that iLike just breached one of their rules and shut it out of Facebook?

Will the Facebook revolt?

What if Facebook hijack all of the iLike page on Facebook and insert Facebook bands pages?

It may sounds creepy and something Facebook will not try to do, but end of day, what matters to facebook is the engagement with their businesses, if they think that one of their developer’s widget is stealing their show, they will do everything/anything to stop them and take the lead.

http://www.octabox.com