iLike Offers New Tools To Concert Promoters

iLike is reaching out to concert promoters with a new set of tools designed to transform its social music discovery service into a more overt advertising platform.

The company has added new tools that let promoters, venue owners, booking agents and bands place advertising for upcoming shows on the iLike system on their own. These tools allow users to target their ads based on iLike members' professed musical tastes and location, as well as provide them various ad-building and distribution features such as the addition of audio song sampling video clips.

These tools add to iLike's existing social networking capabilities, which will allow users to invite friends to concerts they discover via the platform.

iLike says it now has 30 million registered users, and is taking additional steps to not only acquire more, but also add more value to those already on the system. It recently teamed with Rhapsody to offer full-song streaming downloads (25 per month, or unlimited for existing Rhapsody members).

On the heels of the concert ad-network announcement, iLike is also reaching out to third-party Web site developers with a deal that would let them use iLike to become their default music provider.

The service won't launch until later this quarter, but is designed to let developers embed all iLike functionality -- including full-song streaming -- into their sites. It's still unclear what type of personalized integration these developers will have to customize the iLike experience on their sites, or the costs involved.