FINALLY: Different Genres for the iLike Challenge!

This has easily been the single most requested feature we've had (across iLike.com and iLike-on-Facebook).

It has taken a LOT of work to put this together, and while it took a complete re-write under-the-hood, the visible difference on the iLike challenge is just a few links:

But we know these few links will make a huge difference for LOTS of people. We have only added three genres for now, we know people will want more. Fortunately the infrastructure will allow us to add lots of other genres to the challenge, although if you ask for a new genre don't be surprised if we ask for your help in creating the questions! :-)

The other pretty big difference is an improvement we made on iLike.com: now everytime you play a "full song" on the iLike.com website (songs uploaded by the artists themselves), if you play the song to completion it will register among your Recent Plays on your profile, so you can track Recent Plays on your profile even if you don't have the iLike Sidebar for iTunes and Windows Media. :)

Also today we released a pretty significant improvement for the artists on iLike: all artists pages have an "other links" module that an artist can use to link to your official website, MySpace page, or pages for selling CDs, ringtones, t-shirts, etc

Lastly, this week's quote of the week comes from our product manager Aydin, while in the middle of an IM chat with an executive at a partner company: "sorry, do you mind? I have to step away from my desk for a sex". Are c and x too close on the keyboard? or do Freudian slips happen on IM also? we'll never know :-)

p.s. for the iLike.com users waiting for us to link iLike and Facebook accounts - yes, we're still working on it. Releasing the challenge in multiple genres was (believe it or not) more highly requested.

Comments

[Michael M]

First things first, I really enjoy iLike and everything your trying to accomplish. With that said, it seems like there are some pretty major bugs that should require more attention than cute little crowd-pleasing features. For example, when the sidebar syncs in only updates the Most Played Songs, not the Most Played Artists, so as time passes the Artists list becomes increasingly inaccurate. There are also still people who have Most Played Song counts in the 60 and 70,000 range, this is a pretty big bug as it throws off the whole "Top Listener" list. The new features are appreciated, but when it comes down to it, iLike still doesn't do its main job (keeping track of what you listen to) as well as other websites like last.fm.

[Michael M]

Wow, sorry about the typos:
your --> you're
sidebar syncs in --> sidebar syncs, it

[Hadi Partovi]

thank you Michael M for the above comment on our team blog

With respect to the issue between most played songs and most played artists, we had a bug in our code that we weren't aware of - in fact, we were pretty certain it worked correctly, but your feedback helped us track down and fix a bug, thank you!

[Michael M]

Wow! Thank you, iLike team for a quick response and for the flexibility to fix a bug so quickly; I'm impressed. This bug fix puts you miles ahead of last.fm (not to mention that the iLike layout is MUCH more user friendly).

Also, the choice between genres in the iLike challenge is a nice update, too.

[ramses]

hoalaaaaaaaaaaaaa
buen momento esten pasando ok,
sale se cuidan ,,,,,,,,,(nada mas que decir)

[Canuk]

I have been playing the music challenge on facebook, and I have noticed that even though I clicked Rock Music, I am still getting R&B and Hip-Hop and it is bringing down my score! Is this considered a bug? I would like to hear only Rock Music as it is the genre that I am the most familiar with.

Maybe you should have a distinct Heavy Metal section?

[Oskar Lissheim-Boethius]

"p.s. for the iLike.com users waiting for us to link iLike and Facebook accounts - yes, we're still working on it. Releasing the challenge in multiple genres was (believe it or not) more highly requested."

That I can't believe.

[senatorhung]

yes, the genre separation would have been my first request as well, so i'm glad it was done before i signed up. i do like the multi-genre category as a challenge, tho.

would it be possible to also have separate sub-scores by category ? that way, if someone is running up their numbers on the rock scale but still be clueless on the country scale, those of us who can play in multiple genres could garner greater esteem ?

[Paladex]

I'm glad to hear you're planning on adding more genres. I'd be glad to help write questions for the jazz quiz! In the meantime, how about adding more classic (pre-1980) rock to the rock category? I really don't like indy and modern rock, and it seems like at least 90% of the questions concern bands I've never heard of. Or, better yet, just break up the rock quiz into classic rock and modern rock!

[David]

hey, me and my friends really enjoy taking the ilike challenge but we are die-hard metalheads so it would be great if you added metal as a genre. and id be more than happy to help make questions for it. keep up the good work \m/

[Paul Zarvis AKA Paulie Fingers]

Hi folks here at iLike.com If anyone likes Blues Rock check out The AC Thundertones. I was looking at the sites listing of Garageband.com's "All Time" list for the Blues Rock Genre and noticed that our band The AC Thundertones was absent. We had two songs, MISSIN YOU and YOU AINT THE SAME GIRL NO MORE that went to the top Blues Rock charts at Garageband and also we held "All Time" records for keyboards, production, guitarist, vocals and a bunch more. Anyway, just wanted to introduce the AC Thundertones to i-Like.com and you can decide for yourself whether we're a good Blues Rock band.
Happy Holidays all!!

Paulie Fingers~ Piano player from: The AC Thundertones!!

[Luke]

Can you please add a dance/electronica genre?

Thanks :)

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