LOS ANGELES--Already the far-and-away leader in search, Google wants to be a big player in music discovery, too.
The pop-up MySpace player that will appear when clicking the 'play' button in a Google search.
(Credit: MySpace)The search giant teamed up with News Corp.'s MySpace and streaming service Lala for the Wednesday debut of the new Google music search feature at the historic Capitol Records building in Hollywood. With the new music search, which had been internally code-named "OneBox" when news of the project broke earlier this month, search queries pertaining to something like a song, artist, lyrics, or album will bring up links to streaming songs from iLike and MySpace, as well as links to artist information on Pandora, Imeem, and Rhapsody. The lyrics search is provided through a partnership with Gracenote.
"It is directly embedded and integrated into Google search. There's no special button to push," R.J. Pittman, director of product management for search properties, said in a phone interview with CNET News. Currently, due to licensing and availability issues, the music search is U.S.-only.
There also won't be direct download links in Google: those will be handled through Lala and MySpace. "We push all the music engagement and commerce down through the partners," Pittman said.
Additionally, if a relevant music video is available, the MySpace window that pops up when someone clicks on the "play" button in search results will display a link to that video through MySpace's new music video portal. That's interesting, considering music videos are some of the most popular content on Google's own YouTube--but YouTube video results will continue to show up independently of the new music results in Google searches.
Financial terms of the partnerships aren't yet clear. "Everyone's keeping their own revenues and we're not messing with anything," Lala founder and Chairman Bill Nguyen told CNET News. But MySpace Music President Courtney Holt was a bit more tight-lipped, saying "we're not discussing the financial details."
The MySpace deal is a little more complicated to begin with, though. Google had been in talks with music start-up iLike about integration into music search, but then iLike was acquired by MySpace in a deal that closed earlier this month. Indeed, a statement from Holt says that "this relationship was secured and implemented by the iLike team." But iLike founder Ali Partovi (who's currently on board MySpace's music team) explained that the partnership now has "MySpace branding, (and) MySpace content licensing." Through the integration of iLike's technology, it'll also have concert notifications if someone searches on Google for a band that's currently on tour.
"I think MySpace, along with (Apple's) iPod, is one of the most trusted brands in music, one of the most resonant to consumers," Partovi said. MySpace is also reported to be in talks with Microsoft to power a music feature on MSN.
Music search is something that Google could really dominate. According to traffic firm Experian Hitwise, 6 percent of Google's top 1,000 search-related terms deal with music, and already 30 percent of traffic to sites that Hitwise classifies under the "music" umbrella comes from Google.
Considering Google's reach, it's a big win for both MySpace, currently struggling to redefine itself as a pop culture powerhouse rather than a social network through its MySpace Music service, a joint venture with major and independent record labels, and Lala, which also has a new song-gifting deal with Facebook. "We think (Google's music search) going to have a thousand percent increase in our sales, an order of magnitude more," Lala's Nguyen told CNET News.
This also means that music-related search results are getting a sheen of legitimacy on Google. With official partnerships, Google's most prominent music search results will be from sites that have licensing deals in place with the major labels, rather than potentially pirated content. Google's history with the music industry is spotty at best: it's had to strike its own deals with the major record labels, and relations haven't always been positive. Music search puts it all into order, partners in the deal say.
"Instead of ending up with a pirate site and a page with a bunch of ads or random lyrics sites, you wind up with a play button," Nguyen said.
Updated 4:30 p.m. Just after Google and Lala made the announcement official (in what was probably not a coincidence) Yahoo released a blog post designed to point out that they've been offering this kind of music search for a while. "We've made it easier to find music videos, artist information, and play full length songs from within the search results page. This is just one of the many ways Yahoo! is enhancing the search experience for music lovers," said Larry Cornett, vice president of consumer products for Yahoo Search.
MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta has confirmed in a Wednesday conference call that the News Corp.-owned social network has "entered into an agreement to acquire iLike," following rumors earlier in the week.
iLike's co-founders will remain at the company and stay headquartered in Seattle; the service will be "unaffected by the acquisition" in the short term.
Van Natta explained in the conference call that the acquisition is on behalf of MySpace Inc. rather than its MySpace Music division, a joint venture with the major record labels, because the company plans to extend its technology to other areas of entertainment such as gaming and possibly film. He highlighted the "discovery" technology that iLike has built and suggested that MySpace planned to integrate it into some of its other properties.
No terms of the deal were disclosed, but reports have indicated that iLike was sold at quite a bargain--something in the neighborhood of $20 million total--because its ad-supported, streaming music model failed to rake in the profits that investors hoped it would.
Van Natta denied that the deal had been delayed due to iLike board disputes or tax issues, as some reports had suggested.
But it's unclear as to how the deal will affect iLike's relationship with Facebook. The social network's developer platform has been home to much of iLike's activity, and now that it will be owned by Facebook's closest rival, there's a chance that Facebook could restrict or block the app. Van Natta, Facebook's former chief operating officer, said that iLike's apps are part of "a lot of different social networks' experience. We're excited about just continuing to expand that experience to other areas of entertainment that MySpace has assets in."
Meanwhile, Van Natta claimed that MySpace Music is "doing extremely well" and that "we absolutely expect MySpace Music to be an important part of MySpace...for years to come." Several months ago, rumors were swirling around the music industry that its performance hadn't been up to expectations.
This post was last updated at 12:13 p.m. PT.
News Corp.-owned MySpace is "close to acquiring" social music service iLike, according to TechCrunch.
The price tag is rumored to be in the neighborhood of $20 million. Representatives from iLike were not immediately available for comment.
The report comes within days of iLike launching a music download store--a development first reported by CNET News--with MP3s available from all four major record labels.
The deal, if confirmed as accurate, highlights the often complicated connections in digital media's elite ranks.
iLike, for example, rose to fame through its close ties to Facebook. The iLike application, since re-branded to simply Music, was one of the first big applications to launch on Facebook's platform at its debut. Its ad-supported streaming music service has become one of the most prominent in a packed field--it now has about 50 million users and just launched a suite of iPhone apps. But the streaming music niche has proven difficult to monetize and has left some players in the space reportedly hunting for an exit.
MySpace, meanwhile, has seen stagnant growth as the once-far-smaller Facebook has rapidly overtaken it in the social-networking race, thanks in part to the proliferation of third-party apps like iLike on Facebook's groundbreaking developer platform. As part of an executive restructuring earlier this year, MySpace installed former Facebook chief operating officer Owen Van Natta as its CEO, replacing co-founder Chris DeWolfe.
Attempting to refocus and return to its roots as a hub for music and pop culture, MySpace launched its own streaming music service, called MySpace Music, and hired MTV veteran Courtney Holt to run the division. MySpace Music, a joint venture with the record labels, does not operate its own download store but instead directs users to Amazon MP3 downloads through affiliate links. But MySpace Music hasn't received thoroughly positive reviews from the record labels hoping to profit from it.
Disclosure: CNET News is part of CBS Interactive, which also publishes Last.fm, a competitor to iLike.
Updated at 7:38 a.m. PDT with additional details and background.
Music service iLike, best known for third-party applications on platforms like Facebook, made its big iPhone app launch today. The company has rolled out an app for alerts about local concerts, and also launched its previously announced program for bands and artists to create custom fan applications.
Apple still has to approve the "Local Concerts" app, according to a release, but iLike is excited about its potential impact regardless.
"It's something that we really felt was a good idea on paper as we started developing it," iLike CEO Ali Partovi told CNET News, "but as it reached completion and we started using it ourselves it really started seeming like a killer app."
iLike already has had a concert app in the iTunes Store. The company didn't promote it much, Partovi said, because the iPhone 3.0 software was what really made the app worthwhile, and so iLike was waiting until that came out.
"We found that there really were a few key capabilities that the iPhone OS didn't support at the time," he explained, referring specifically to push notifications and some software tweaks that enable better personalization. So the revamped iLike concerts app, thanks to iPhone software upgrades, will scan the music selection on an iPhone or iPod Touch, and send pop-up alerts when a band or artist that the user listens to will be in town.
"It turns the iPod into much more of a live device to be connected to the world of live music," Partovi said of the free app.
The custom artist apps, meanwhile, haven't changed much from when iLike originally announced the program in May. Over 250 artists have signed on to the program, the company said, including Pete Yorn, Reba McIntire, and Enrique Iglesias. iLike takes half the revenues from sales of the apps, and charges a $99 fee with the right to serve ads if the artist in question decides to offer its custom app for free.
CNET News reported last month that iLike was also in talks with the major music labels to open a download store, after a deal to offer full-length songs through subscription service Rhapsody failed to materialize.
Social music start-up iLike has come a long way from its early days as the way to "dedicate a song" to your friends on Facebook.
On Wednesday, the Seattle-based company plans to unveil some fresh new features for the set of tools it offers to artists who want to connect with current and potential fans. It's hooked up the application program interfaces (APIs) of Twitter, YouTube, and MySpace to allow for more extensive content syndication from artists' iLike pages, and has released an iPhone app-creation product to boost their mobile presences.
"Marketing and communication are the primary things that artists are still in need of a third party's help in," CEO Ali Partovi told CNET News. "Music production and distribution, I think, there are pretty successful and well-established services right now that essentially let you do it yourself."
The Twitter, YouTube, and MySpace add-ons are understandable supplements to the existing "artist pages" feature that iLike says more than 300,000 bands and artists now use. With Twitter's API, artists using iLike will be able to embed a Twitter widget on their iLike pages as well as syndicate iLike updates out to their Twitter feeds. They'll also be able to automatically publish a video to YouTube when they publish it to iLike, and vice versa; with the News Corp.-owned MySpace, they can add iLike "RSVP" links to MySpace concert listings and cross-post blogs and videos to both services.
For iLike, which got its start as an iTunes plug-in and now specializes in developer applications for social networks like Facebook, Bebo, and Hi5, this move is another step toward making it a more flexible, distributed alternative to simply running a MySpace band page. iLike, in addition, recently rebranded its Facebook app to simply "Music."
As part of the new feature package, it's also selling artist analytics about where fans are located, how much they interact with iLike pages, and how well individual pieces of content like videos and blog posts perform. That'll cost $99 per year, Partovi said.
But the center of the new iLike offering is the "turnkey system" for creating custom iPhone apps. Basically, this is a relatively quick way for an artist to create an iPhone app that gives fans access to tour dates, iTunes Store purchasing, videos on YouTube, blog entries, and related content.
It's also a new revenue stream for iLike, which will take a cut of the sale of each iPhone app if an artist chooses to charge for it, and will charge an activation fee if the artist chooses to offer the app in the iTunes Store for free. As a launch promotion, that activation fee is currently $99; a formal price will be announced next week.
There might be some advertising down the road, too, though Partovi declined to say when or how. "Our plan in terms of the business model, like everything else we've done, is (to) put it out there and develop adoption, and over time to figure out the best way to monetize it."
Not everyone's going to want to download iPhone apps to keep tabs on every single one of their favorite artists, and while Partovi said that a sort of universal iLike "favorite artists" app isn't yet on the company's iPhone roadmap, he expects there are enough artists with rabid fan bases for the apps to be a success.
"I don't anticipate a whole lot of fans downloading a hundred different apps for their favorite artists," Partovi said, "but for a fan that has a small group of artists that they're really passionate about, there are fans who will want everything that they can get their hands on from that artist."
And what happens if one of the artists pulls a Nine Inch Nails and gets rejected by Apple due to "objectionable" content? iLike is responsible for the submission process, and hence also responsible for what happens in the event of rejection, but Partovi implied that he's keeping his fingers crossed that there won't be an issue. "We're going to take care of the submission," he said. "We can't guarantee approval, per se, but there's common elements from app to app. We're hoping that once we get some traction that it'll be generally easier."
The Jonas Brothers totally want to add Mark Zuckerberg as a friend now.
The Jonas Brothers, that family of mop-topped teen pop-rockers who seem to be just about everywhere these days, are going to be debuting their new single on Facebook this Thursday.
They'll be performing the new song, "Paranoid," in the first of four Webcasts created with a Ustream app for the Facebook platform. Fans can access it by navigating to the band's Facebook fan page. The Jonas Brothers, who also were poster boys for the debut of the MySpace Music service, also will answer questions from fans and talk about their upcoming tour. That's at 5 p.m. PDT on Thursday; they'll host three more Webcasts on May 14, 21, and 28.
Over a million people have signed up as Jonas Brothers "fans" on the band's official Facebook page, but considering Facebook has over 200 million active users, that's a fairly small number. This promotional effort will undoubtedly shine a brighter spotlight on Facebook fan pages, which the social network has been hyping up a lot with a fresh redesign and prominent placement in the "streams" of members' home pages.
There is, however, a more significant impact to this announcement than just the synergy of one of this decade's biggest music sensations (I guess they're kind of like this generation's Hanson, right?) and one of its biggest tech sensations. "This marks the first time a U.S. musical artist is debuting a new song via a live Webcast series on their Facebook Page," a statement from Facebook read.
Yet song debuts are nothing new to the social-networking world: Debuting the stream of a new single or album on a social music site like MySpace Music, iLike, Imeem, and Last.fm (owned by CNET News publisher CBS Interactive) has become a regular promotional stop for artists looking to spread the buzz about new releases. Many of these services have a heavy presence on Facebook's third-party application platform, and Facebook even partnered with one of the most popular, iLike, to debut a Thievery Corporation album last year.
There have been rumors over and over again that Facebook was looking to start a music service of its own, or maybe to acquire one of the popular music apps on its platform. That hasn't come to fruition. But does this new move mean Facebook is starting to compete directly with some of the music applications that have made its platform so popular? Maybe.
We'll see when those totally dreamy Jonas Brothers show up there on Thursday.
iLike, a social music service that has created one of the more popular applications for Facebook's platform, has changed the app's name to the more straightforward "Music."
"Over 40 million music fans like you have used iLike to share music and discover concerts, and we're grateful to you for being one of them," an e-mail sent to members who have installed the app said. "To maintain consistency with other Facebook applications, we're renaming the 'iLike' application to simply 'Music.'"
The company name hasn't changed, and it hasn't yet reflected this on its Web site. But head over to Facebook, and the app's name has changed to "Music (iLike)."
"It's just a name change," iLike representative Emily Glassman told CNET News in an e-mail. "We did some research and saw that every other big app is named as a common noun ('Causes,' 'Movies,' 'Bumper Sticker,' etc.) and we wanted to be more consistent with what seems to be the norm on the Facebook Platform."
I'm going to put on my Web 2.0 tinfoil hat for a second and wonder if changing its app name to simply "Music" is something that iLike has wanted to do for a while, but couldn't because of internal regulations at Facebook. There were, at a time, loads of rumors that Facebook would be launching a music service of its own. One would think they'd want the name "Music" to be reserved for it.
It's a stretch, but iLike taking the "Music" app name could be taken as a sign that Facebook won't be creating its own service with that name. Either that, or maybe they'll buy this one. And that's too many conspiracy theories for a Saturday afternoon.
This post was updated at 5:16 p.m. PT.
Hey, indie bands. Does MySpace Music's big focus on the major labels make you sad? iLike wants to hear from you--literally.
The "social music" company, best-known for its add-on apps for Facebook and iTunes, has partnered with music distribution start-up TuneCore so that unsigned artists can market their music through iLike and get royalties when it's streamed there.
TuneCore already lets independent artists sell their music through iTunes, Amazon MP3, and Rhapsody, which has a deal with iLike (and MTV and Yahoo).
It's not surprising that a company such as iLike would choose to make a move in favor of indie artists. The most high-profile digital-music initiative to emerge this year was MySpace Music, a streaming and retail marketplace created by the News Corp.-owned social network. But while MySpace got its start as a promotional center for indie bands, MySpace Music has focused on the four major labels, all of which have invested in the project. While independent distributor The Orchard also has contributed to MySpace Music, some indie musicians have said they feel jilted.
iLike CEO Ali Partovi says partnering with TuneCore isn't, in fact, a MySpace Music-induced move.
"Not at all. We've been in dialogue, I think, since February," Partovi said of TuneCore. "We've been fans of each others' companies for a long time, trying to work out a way to work with each other, and this was well under way before all of that (MySpace Music) surfaced. We generally have tried to focus on what we're doing ourselves, not to do things in response."
He added, "Frankly, I think the talk about MySpace's issue--I think over time, they will work that out too." MySpace Music is indeed still new and has plenty of time to renew its focus on the indies. But for now, iLike has quite the opportunity.
Facebook's favorite music service, iLike, has officially launched its developer platform. The company first hinted at this several months ago and CNET News reported last week that it was nearing its debut. With the platform, approved developers will be able to access the iLike API and work it into their own sites.
"We've always adopted a strategy of syndication, of going where the consumers are instead of trying to bring them to us," CEO Ali Partovi told CNET News on Tuesday. Indeed, iLike launched first an iTunes plugin and then a Facebook application to spread its product around. Partovi said that it was "natural" for iLike to go for a developer platform strategy after becoming so successful as a platform app itself.
But there's an interesting twist to iLike's platform: it's specifically focused on making iLike playlists available and openly collaborative. That's evident in the list of launch partners: the forthcoming Connected Weddings application on Facebook, for example, will let wedding guests add to a suggested song playlist; the Flixster movies application will use iLike's API to let members build movie soundtracks to accompany the film's page in the Flixster directory; the set of TV-fan apps built by Watercooler will let fans also construct the soundtrack that played in the background in any episode of a given TV show. Other partners include Classtop.com, the Social Gaming Network's Free Gifts application, Slide's FunSpace, Jambool, Mesmo.com, and Zimride's Carpools application.
The partners don't end with social applications, either: IAC's Evite will be using iLike's API for a "playlist" tab on each invitation, so that guests can build a party soundtrack, and both TypePad and Google have built embeddable blog widgets to incorporate music.
Playlists are hot, and not just because teen quasi-heartthrob Michael Cera is about to star in a movie about them. The forthcoming MySpace Music heavily features playlist creation, and start-up Muxtape caught on as a hipster sensation before being pulled under mysterious circumstances that likely involved the RIAA. Several other social music services also offer playlist features--Imeem has been doing it for years.
iLike's playlists, as with the rest of the music on the site, have full-length streaming songs available in collaboration with subscription service Rhapsody. That means that you can listen to 25 songs for free before needing to sign up for a Rhapsody account (if you don't, you're restricted to 30-second samples). Imeem and MySpace Music, on the other hand, offer fewer restrictions on free full-length playback.
It's not perfect, mostly because the music is restricted to what's available in iLike's library. While testing out the app I could only access one of the two albums by one of my favorite bands, the Fratellis, and I'm sure there are plenty more instances of missing albums and artists.
But music fans, not to mention iLike's partners, have reason to be psyched: this is a legitimately cool feature. And the struggling Rhapsody, which has been unable to really eat into iTunes' market share, could get a handful of new subscribers out of it: you know, when tipsy party guests wonder why song No. 26 on their Evite playlist won't play, and are more than willing to cough up a subscription fee to keep the beat going.
iLike, the social music service that rose to popularity with the launch of Facebook's developer platform last year, is getting bigger. The company announced that membership has surpassed 30 million users, and that it'll soon be getting the buzz out even more by letting developers put music on their sites through an iLike application programming interface.
But more importantly (i.e. on the money front), iLike has launched an ad platform specifically geared toward bands and concert promoters. Audiences can be targeted by music preferences and location, rather than keywords, which iLike says will give advertisers a huge advantage. (Think about it: how many people who quote Britney Spears on their social-networking profiles actually would want to go to one of her concerts?)
Finally, iLike has launched the partnership with Rhapsody that was announced earlier this month. Members can now stream songs in full length (rather than 30-second previews) 25 times, and after that they're invited to register for Rhapsody accounts. That's currently only live on iLike.com, but the company is working on integrating it with its wildly popular Facebook app soon.
