iLike Team Blog

Happy Birthday iLike! :-)

As of yesterday iLike.com is one-year-old. Happy Birthday iLike! What a year it has been - Since our initial launch, our growth on Facebook, and the recent announcement of iLike's Artist Services platform, the past year has felt like a whirlwind of activity for us.

And here's a nice coincidence - as of this week, iLike now has 15,000,000 registered users! 

Talk about a nice birthday present. We can't say often enough how lucky we feel to have built something that so many people use, and we thank all our users for their feedback which motivates us to continue innovating and improving.

New: album release updates - on Facebook and on iLike.com!
Our latest new feature: album release updates!  You will see a note about new album releases by your favorite artists everywhere you see artist activity today: on the iLike.com home page (registered users only), on iLike on Facebook, and soon in the iLike.com newsletter and in the iLike Sidebar!

This week's quote of the week is "oops". That's our apology for a typo in an earlier post where we announced iLike's new social media charts which will be syndicated by Billboard. We accidentally wrote it as if these are the first ever charts of social music - and some of you aptly pointed out that many companies have had music charts for a long time (including iLike! - we announced our first charts on Jan 22 on this blog). What we meant to say is: this is the first time Billboard Magazine is publishing social media based music charts. We're excited that Billboard chose iLike as the authoritative source on social music (another nice birthday present). If you were upset by the typo, please accept our apology. :-)

iLike and Billboard Join Forces to Produce Social Media Charts

We have some exciting news to share! We just made an exciting joint announcement with Billboard, the premiere music industry publication and the world's most trusted brand for music charts.

Billboard has agreed to syndicate two new iLike music charts:

• Weekly top songs added on Facebook
• Weekly top songs added on iTunes / Windows MediaPlayer

To put this news into perspective, these are Billboard's first-ever social media based charts. Both weekly charts will draw upon the massive volume of daily music activity that iLike tracks across the Internet. We expect these charts will become important industry tools.

Here's what Billboard's vice president and editorial director of the digital division had to say about this multi-tiered chart and content initiative: "The popularity of iLike makes this data a compelling tool for music lovers to discover new music as well as for marketers to track audience trendlines,” said Scott McKenzie, Billboard's parent company. “We’re thrilled to be bringing the music and social media industries together in such an innovative way.” 

As part of this announcement, Billboard will also provide live newsfeeds to iLike.com and iLike on Facebook.

For more details, please read the press release.

The iLike Sidebar for Windows Media Player!

We just launched the iLike Sidebar with a single install that works across Windows and Mac, iTunes and Windows Media Player, and iLike.com or iLike-on-Facebook!

Facebook users, get it here: 
http://apps.facebook.com/ilike/download

iLike.com users, get it here:
http://iLike.com/download

This new Sidebar also combines your iLike.com friend-list and your Facebook friendlist, to show you what all your friends are listening to.

Thank you to all the Windows Media Player users who waited patiently for this release, and please let us know if you find any issues!

New on Facebook: my friends' music, my friends' concerts:
Users of iLike on Facebook now can see their friends' music and friends' concerts:

   

New for artists: weekly stats newsletter
Artists who sign up for the iLike Artist Services Platform now get a weekly update of stats on how their music is used. For more info, see our Artist Services blog.

In other news, iLike.com is only one week away from it's 1-year anniversary, and we're also 1-week away from that magical milestone of 15,000,000 users. If we're lucky we'll hit 15mm on our birthday! :)

Linking iLike.com/Facebook accounts, and new features for artists

Merge your iLike and Facebook accounts
We've been collecting requests for this forever, and we're finally there (or at least 95% there).

If you have an account on iLike.com and on the iLike application in Facebook, you can finally link your two accounts and we will properly sync the data between the two.

What this will do:

• Merge (and sync) your Songs iLike on Facebook and on iLike
• Merge (and sync) your iLike Challenge score on Facebook and on iLike
• Display your iTunes playlists on your Facebook music page (if you use the iLike Sidebar for iTunes).
• Coming soon: merge (and sync) your Artists iLike on Facebook and on iLike

So if you haven't already, link your iLike.com account to your Facebook.com account !! :)

In other news, we have made a ton of other improvements to iLike.com and on Facebook - for music lovers and for musicians:

Improved Charts
We now have lots of new music charts. On iLike.com we added the "songs most added in iTunes and Windows Media Player. On Facebook we have the same charts as iLike.com, but we also show charts of songs-most-added to profiles, and songs-most-dedicated.

See the new chart on iLike.com
See the 8 new iLike charts on Facebook

Updates from your favorite artists - in your Facebook newsfeed
The picture says it all - you will get alerted in your Facebook newsfeed when your favorite artists announce concerts, post videos, add free MP3s, etc


Various features for musicians on the iLike Artist Services Platform

• Artists who sign up to use the iLike Artist Services Platform now have access to stats for how many times there songs are added to profiles or dedicated to friends on Facebook.
• We've added the ability to upload 30-second clips for songs where you feel unsure about uploading the full song stream
• You can now send iCasts on the road - with Mobile iCast you can post video/audio/photos to your artist page with no setup required!
• iCast messages can now include HTML formatting including links
• When you post stuff to your artist page your fans are alerted in their Artist Activity and Facebook newsfeed