iLike Social Music Discovery for iTunes

GarageBand.com's founders have rolled out iLike.com, a new social music discovery add-on which integrates with Apple's iTunes and, eventually, with other music services.

The founders of long-running independent music Web site GarageBand.com have taken the wraps off iLike, a new social music discovery service which integrates directly with Apple’s iTunes jukebox application, enabling users to discover new music and share their favorite music with friends.

The basic idea behind iLike is that users install the iLike Sidebar for iTunes (available for Windows XP and Mac OS X); the sidebar adds a Buddy List-like feature to iTunes, enabling users to see what music their friends like, and listen to 30-second samples. By creating a profile of music listening habits on the iLike Web sites, the sidebar can offer personalized music recommendations from the more than 200,000 artists represented on GarageBand.com’s music service. The sidebar also offers a one-click playlist generator, and users can surf the iLike website to find users who share—or don’t share—musical tastes.

“With iLike, the iTunes and iPod experience finally expands from being a solitary activity to a social one, enabling consumers to discover a world of new music and to share that experience with their friends,” said Hadi Partovi, iLike’s COO. “In addition, the integration of iLike with GarageBand.com brings tremendous benefits to independent musicians, as it helps new artists get discovered directly based on the merits of their music.”

Right now, iLike is only available as add-on to iTunes, but plans are afoot to bring iLike to other music services such as Real Networks’ Rhapsody and Microsoft’s forthcoming Zune marketplace. The sidebar is free; iLike hopes to earn money through targetted advertising, promoting concert events, reselling ringtones, and collecting a bit of iTunes sales made through iLike.