MySpace May Acquire iLike For $20M

MySpace has been doing rather well on the music front in recent days; this month, it’s debuted a Heath Ledger-directed music video and some Pearl Jam songs.  The site may soon chalk up another win, too, as one report indicates it’s about to make a significant acquisition.

Michael Arrington writes, "MySpace is close to acquiring popular social music service iLike, we’ve confirmed with multiple sources.  The deal, which should close this week, will be MySpace’s first acquisition since new CEO Owen Van Natta took control of the company in April 2009.  The price is ‘around $20 million.’"

Since iLike has raised $16.5 million in funding since getting started in 2006, that sounds like quite a bargain.  What’s more, iLike has ties to Facebook, Bebo, and Orkut, and claims to have over 50 million registered users, so MySpace might be getting a lot of "ins."

As for what sort of people are involved, the founder of MTV, a Clear Channel SVP, and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla are members of iLike’s advisory board, so MySpace seems to be receiving an implicit nod from some pretty important folks.

We’ll be sure to provide additional details as they become available.