Artist Services Blog

Banner Photos on Artist Pages

We thought we might be on to something last week when a new feature we had yet to announce to our artist community had already been adopted by a significant number of artists just 12 hours after we launched it.

Here’s the deal: Our new customization features lets you easily add a large banner image to the top of your Artist Page. Via your Artist Dashboard, you can conveniently upload a photo that will appear on both your iLike.com and your Facebook Artist Pages. Coming soon, this feature will also be available on OpenSocial.

For now, we can accommodate photos that are 955x260. Moving forward we plan to offer cropping tools to make the process even easier.

To learn how to add a banner photo to your artist page, please check out our F.A.Q. entry for instructions.

Click on the photos below to see some cool examples:

Metro Station	Beyoncé

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New Music Player & More

We recently launched a new music player designed to enhance listening options for fans. It is available as either a pop-out player or inline. This means music fans can now listen to iLike Artist and Music Feeds while they browse iLike.com, our leading Facebook app, or the Web.

And there’s more:

•      Our new “Play All” functionality makes it even easier for fans to discover new music from their favorite artists. Featured songs now show up in users’ newsfeeds. And fans can essentially create a featured songs playlist directly from their newsfeed (comprised of songs from their favorite artists).

•     Fans can also create and listen to iLike artist radio stations. iLike artist radio stations continuously play a selected artist’s featured songs along with similar songs that are auto-generated by iLike’s recommendations system. Listeners can provide real-time feedback by selecting either “Play more music like this” or “Skip this song and play less music like this.” Additionally, users can choose to watch YouTube videos rather than listening to full song streams.

In keeping with our commitment to help your fans discover and buy your music, we also provide highly visible retail links so that fans can buy your music while they are listening to the iLike music player, artist playlists and artist radio stations.

To check out this new functionality and learn more, go to: http://www.ilike.com.

Make the most of our new promo slots

We recently updated the  iLike home page on Facebook, check  it out.  We've heard positive feedback and excitement about  the new look.  As promised, we're following up on how you can make the  most of the new promotional slots: the promotional modules highlight artists  across the iLike network and are programmed using a mix of community driven  user feedback, artist activity, and editorial selection by our staff.  As  an artist this is what you can do to increase your opportunity of showing up  in these placements:

Post using the iLike Artist Dashboard - Use the dashboard tools to post videos, songs, and blogs to keep fans updated and engaged.  Remember, whenever you post to your dashboard those items show up in your fan's newsfeed. For each fan we pick one artist's song  or video to highlight in a graphical promo slot. The more videos and songs you post, the more promotion you will get.

Promote the iLike Sidebar for iTunes- We track the fastest spreading music across the iLike Network, and a few top artists (some signed, some unsigned) are highlighted at random on the home page slots. Besides encouraging your fans to send your music to their friends, please encourage your fans to get the iLike Sidebar for iTunes. This will help you move up the charts (signed or unsigned).

Get recommended - If you're a Garageband Artist you can show up in iLike recommendations by participating in the Garageband Song Contest. We're currently; working on a similar review contest on iLike called the iLike Spin-up. (more on that soon) You can also get into iLike recommendations by having your fans install the iLike Sidebar and play your music. We use community music tastes to help recommend your music to potential fans.

Very soon these promotional modules will be visible across the entire iLike network. This means your work to get discovered just got easier. Just by taking the steps above you could be promoted to fans across Facebook, MySpace, hi5, Orkut, and iLike.com.

Syndicate Your Videos With The New iLike Video Widget

Based on the same concept as our popular song widget, we recently launched an iLike video widget.

Our video widget enables you to embed your videos on any Website or blog, taking our “Post Once, Publish Everywhere” motto to the next level. And the entire process can be managed from the simple interface of your existing iLike Artist Dashboard.

You’ve been able to embed individual video posts for a long time, but with our new video widget you can now embed a video “channel” featuring multiple videos on blogs and sites across the Web. Once embedded, you can later reorder, remove and update the videos you’ve syndicated.

Over time, as you add more videos to your dashboard, they will auto-populate everywhere you’ve embedded your widget. Not only that, but the newest videos you post will automatically surface to the top slot, keeping the experience fresh and current for your fans with no manual effort on your part.

We think of this new functionality as a personal broadcast channel. Your iLike video player, which works on MySpace in addition to all the leading online platforms iLike syndicates content on, will also feature your artist activity. Better yet, your fans can also embed your video player, helping the viral spread of your videos and music across the Web.

Check it out in the widget section of the artist dashboard.  We hope you’ll start using this new feature today!

Get paid when your music streams on iLike!

We’ve teamed up with TuneCore to help you make money from your music.  You’ll not only earn royalties when people listen to your music on iLike, but also get the best deal for selling your music on iTunes and elsewhere.

Your music on iTunes and more: Use TuneCore to get your music on iTunes, Amazon-mp3, Rhapsody and more. Once your music is on Rhapsody it will also appear on Yahoo, MTV and iLike.

Make Money on iLike: Via Rhapsody, you’ll earn money every time your music is streamed on iLike, including on Facebook and other platforms where iLike is available.

Make Money on Your Own Website: Thanks to our new tools to embed iLike on your own website, you can even earn money when your fans listen to your songs at your own website.

Get 100% of the royalties: Unlike other services that take a % of your sales, TuneCore and iLike believe you should keep 100%. You only pay a flat fee to submit your music.

Start making money now: sign up for a free account at TuneCore today.

Embed Your Music On Your Website or Any Blog

Big News: We have just launched an iLike song widget that will make it really easy for you to embed your featured songs from iLike on any website or blog across the Web (including your official Website and fansites).

Here’s how it works: From your iLike Artist Dashboard, you can now embed any song you’ve uploaded on iLike in blogs and websites across the Web by simply copying and pasting a snippet of code.

Once embedded, you can later reorder, remove and update the songs you’ve syndicated from the convenience of your iLike Dashboard – anytime and anywhere you want. In fact, the widget will automatically update whenever you upload or reorder songs via your Artist Dashboard.

We hope you’ll share examples of the ways and places you are using this new functionality. The only limitation is your imagination.

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Update: We've had a few quesitons about how to find this inside the aritst dashboard.  Just click the "widgets" link next to your artist picture on the dashboard.  Also note, the site where you embed this widget must support javascript. For example, this widget will not work on MySpace because they do no support embedding javascript.

New and Improved Homepage on Facebook

We’re excited to tell you about our just-launched and fully redesigned homepage on Facebook.

We’ve improved our homepage to showcase artists across iLike, making it even easier for you to connect with your fans. The top of the homepage now features prominent slots for artists. Currently, we select artists for these slots from iLike charts and recommendations. Eventually, these slots will be a mix of editorial, promotional and paid placements. Right underneath is a new section of our homepage called “Messages from Artists,” which we built to call fans’ attention to your latest bulletin posts.  Now it’s even easier to reach your fans with personal messages.

Hope you’ll check it out and let us know what you think. In the coming weeks we’ll continue to tweak our new look. And we’ll share more details soon about how to get featured in and make the most of our new merchandising slots.

A Great New Way To Impact the Presidential Election

Want a really easy and leveraged way to impact the election?  Check out www.iLike.com/vote and forward it to your fans — just a few days old, this page is exploding in traffic due to celebrity support plus natural viral spread.  The page is designed to help people get their friends to register to vote.  For each person you send to visit this site today, hundreds of their friends’ friends will hit it within a week.

It may look simple: Just a vote-drive that encourages young people to register to vote.  The premise is: “Pledge to vote, win a huge, free concert for your college!” 

Here’s Why It’s Unique: Thanks to the power of Facebook and our experience with social marketing, this page is INSANELY viral, and is spreading like wildfire. More than 90,000 people have participated since we launched just five days ago. Rock The Vote told us today that we are their #6 driver of voter registration (out of more than 20,000 participating Websites).

How You Can Help: Every minute, each person who sees this page is inviting a dozen of their friends, who invite their friends, and so on. For each person I send it to today, hundreds of their friends’ friends will see it by the end of the week, resulting in dozens of new registered voters.  If we can get a few thousand additional people to hit this page today, the trends say it could reach millions of young voters before next week’s voter-registration deadlines.

The potential for empowering young people, and bringing people together through music is enormous. But time is of the essence. This could have enormous impact, if enough people start seeing it today. For that reason, we encourage you to tell your fans today about this special online event.

Ps. Huge thanks to international superstars Jason Mraz, Will.I.Am, and Wyclef for their generosity offering free concerts on short notice!  Click play below to watch the fantastic video that Jason Mraz recorded for the project.  Or watch it here.

Add Interactive Music Features to Your Website or Blog

iLike just launched a music platform that enables artists and their representatives to add music and interactive playlists to websites and blogs with unprecedented ease.

Any third party developer can now legally add music to their website, blog or application with just a snippet of simple code. Premier launch partners include four of the top 10 Facebook applications and major consumer websites including Google Blogger, Evite and TypePad.

Example screenshots: (click a screenshot to enlarge it or download it)

This continues iLike’s tradition of working with the music industry and empowering artists; Through iLike’s relationship with Rhapsody, artists and labels will be paid royalties each time their music is played on any participating website, blog or Facebook application, further supporting iLike’s goal of monetizing social music consumption. In addition to the royalties that will be paid via Rhapsody’s existing agreements, iLike’s retail links for downloads, concert tickets and ringtone sales will gain exposure across the Web and the Facebook Platform, generating additional revenue for artists and labels.

Check out www.iLike.com/developer to learn more and conveniently add interactive playlists to your official website or blog.

iLike Self-Serve Ad Platform and New Pricing Model

Indie bands, artist management, concert promoters, venue owners and booking agents can now use iLike’s newly launched self-serve advertising tool to promote concerts to music fans across the top social networks.

Key benefits include the ability to: Target music fans based on location and musical tastes rather than key words; Create multi-media ads, including music playback and social links, with just a few clicks of the mouse; Save time managing campaigns in multiple markets via auto-generated ads with self-populating concert data; Tap into potential “viral spread” of concert information via built-in social hooks that encourage fans to invite friends to concerts; Transcend the flawed medium of print and radio advertising to reach music fans who are actively looking to discover live music in their market where they really spend their time – online.

Pricing: To make sure you get your money’s worth on every ad you place, you pay per click. This means that what you pay for your ad is directly tied to how many people click to buy or learn more about your live music event. iLike handles targeting the impressions and optimizing your ad to generate clicks so that you can focus on your music.

Recent enhancements to our new ad tool include better stats and the ability to adjust your budget and advertising parameters mid-way through a campaign. Coming soon, we’ll be offering venue pages for venue promoters and the ability to promote a single album or artist.

To learn more and get started, go to: www.iLike.com/advertise