MySpace has snapped up the Facebook-centric music application iLike, for around $20 million.
The founders of iLike, Ali and Hadi Partovi, created the service in 2006 backed by $16.5 million in VC funding from Ticketmaster and others.
The Partovi brothers will stay on in senior management positions running the acquisition from its HQ in Seattle. The music recommendation and online retail service boasts 55 million users, 10 million of whom are on Facebook.
“We believe what iLike has created isn't limited to just music and should extend to all the areas important to MySpace users, such as entertainment, video, and games,” MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta said.
He said the iLike technology would complement its MySpace Music joint venture, a free music streaming and discovery platform it launched with major recording companies in September.
The application has social networking features such as the ability to attach itself to Apple's iTunes music store with song recommendations, to issue notification of upcoming concerts and Twitter posts by users favorite artists, and to allow users to see what their friends are listening to.
This fits squarely onto MySpace’s re-casting of itself as an entertainment destination rather than a social platform. The application also holds a wealth of valuable demographic and rich marketing data on the musical preferences of individual users.
music streaming service Spotify
Li won’t disclose the size of the investment, but it has earned his group a seat on the Spotify board, Forbes.com reported. Frank Meehan, the head of INQ, Hutchison Whampoa’s new device company, will take the director’s seat.
Spotify raised as much as $50 million earlier this month, valuing the company at around $250 million, Forbes said.