iLike and LaLa Pull the Strings Behind Major Music Initiatives

I’ve never really paid much attention to iLike or LaLa in the past, but it seems these two services are going to play an important role making music available to fans on the web, regardless of where they actually hang out. Myspace, Facebook, and Google are all using iLike and LaLa to power their latest music initiatives and expand their offerings.

Myspace Music

Myspace has been struggling to stay relevant in it’s competition with Facebook to be the top social network. It has tried to leverage the power of it’s music community in order to get an edge and rightfully so since many people avoid it’s social networking features like the plague. Now, Myspace has launched a music video archive way more comprehensive that what was available before. The videos are monetized to the gills, including pre and post-roll ads and links to buy the song or ringtones from Amazon or iTunes.

Myspace acquired popular music service iLike earlier this year and is taking advantage of some of iLike’s features in a new artist dashboard. This is a new back-end interface that features deep analytics about an artist’s fans. Artists can few specific data like age and location of their fans along with number of plays, views, and other standard stats. It’s available in 17 languages.

Google Music?

It hasn’t been officially confirmed at this point and we’re not sure if this is a full-fledged music service run by Google, or simply an integration of more advanced music features into your search results. I’m leaning toward the later as it appears Google has partnered with iLike and LaLa to make it easier to find details and media related to your favorite artists. This is also interesting because Myspace acquired iLike, so this is basically a major partnership between Google and Myspace. More details and screenshots at TechCrunch.

Facebook Music Gifts

Facebook is now offering the ability to purchase songs as gifts to your friends. Powered by LaLa.com, you can choose from over 8 million songs. You can purchase a song for 1 credit and play it online, or you can buy it for 9 credits to get a full, downloadable, DRM-free MP3. Friends who can see the recipients gift will be able to play it in full once, but then it will become a 30-second snippet. Looks like Facebook’s gift features have just become slightly useful.

About the Author
Rahsheen has been a certified geek since before it was the thing to do. He started programming and tinkering in the 4th grade. Now, Rahsheen mostly writes on various sites about technology trends in social media and mobile. . He is also a musician, singer, rapper, writer, and producer. @rahsheen - +Rahsheen Porter - coachrah.com
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