Wharton Study Finds iLike Users Acquire 250% More Music

WHARTON STUDY FINDS iLIKE USERS ACQUIRE 250% MORE MUSIC IN MONTH AFTER REGISTRATION

Research Collaboration Suggests that iLike Fosters Music Discovery and Drives Increased Music Consumption

SEATTLE, WA (February 11, 2008) – The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, a leading business school, and iLike, the web’s leading social music discovery service, today announced initial results of an ongoing research collaboration: that long-term iLike users added nearly 250% more music per month to their libraries in the first month of using iLike. One of the top drivers of affiliate sales to the iTunes Store, iLike helps over 20 million registered users discover new music they like, and makes it easy for them to buy that music via retail links. The study indicates that the significant increase in people’s music consumption may be attributed to the iLike Sidebar (www.iLike.com/download) for iTunes and Windows Media Player.

“The Wharton results are a powerful validation that iLike successfully exposes people to music that they like enough to download or buy,” said Ali Partovi, CEO of iLike. “It’s no surprise, given this new data, that iLike is one of the top affiliates of iTunes and Ticketmaster.”

“Personalization technologies are changing how we discover media,” said Wharton professor Kartik Hosanagar and doctoral candidate Daniel Fleder. “The initial results are exciting and are part of a larger collaboration about how recommender systems, such as the iLike Sidebar, affect the diversity of media we consume.”

As part of a larger study, the research collaboration was conducted on data from a year-long period, from August 2006-July 2007. Highlights follow:

* Long-term users of iLike added nearly 250% more music to their personal music libraries within a month of registering on iLike versus the month before.

* Five months later, active iLike users continue to add nearly 30 to 50% more music per month than before joining.

* It is indicated that the iLike Sidebar may account for this dramatic increase in music purchasing among iLike users.

Methodological Remarks
The group exposed to iLike consisted of active users, those who keep the Sidebar installed for the study’s duration. The results should be interpreted in the context of this group. Inactive users are those who later uninstall the plugin. For inactives, the change in consumption may be less. In addition, while the analysis emulates an experimental setting, registration is the user’s choice and not a randomized assignment. For this reason, it is possible that consumption increases for reasons unrelated to iLike. We believe this is mitigated by two factors. One, the increase occurs sharply at the time of registration, limiting the possibility that registration is a response to an existing change in demand. Second, the period studied is soon after iLike was founded. This suggests consumers may be responding to a change in supply rather than a contemporaneous change in their own demand. While these factors cannot be ruled out, the study provides evidence that iLike is associated with an increase in music consumption.

About iLike, inc
iLike is the Web's leading social music discovery service and the dominant music application on the Facebook®, hi5 and Bebo platforms. With more than 20 million registered users, iLike helps people share music recommendations, playlists, and personalized concert alerts. The iLike Sidebar for iTunes and Windows Media Player suggests new music, creates automatic playlists, and connects people through music. iLike offers musicians and labels a Universal Artist Dashboard™ from which to reach fans and manage their presence across multiple channels: Facebook, hi5, Bebo, iLike.com, Ask.com, iLike Sidebar plugins for iTunes and Windows Media Player. By leveraging iLike's "artist-fan graph," a vast database of connections between consumers and their favorite artists, iLike helps artists reach their fans and cultivate the viral spread of their music. iLike, inc also runs indie music site GarageBand.com.

About The Wharton School
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania -- founded in 1881 as the first collegiate business school -- is recognized globally for intellectual leadership and ongoing innovation across every major discipline of business education. The most comprehensive source of business knowledge in the world, Wharton bridges research and practice through its broad engagement with the global business community. The school has more than 4,600 undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, and doctoral students; more than 8,000 annual participants in executive education programs; and an alumni network of more than 81,000 graduates.

Contact:
Emily Glassman
iLike
Cell: 206.708.4478
Email: Emily@iLike-inc.com

Comments

[dəmir]

thank u