"Due to upcoming Facebook changes, your Music data on Facebook won’t show on your profile and you’ll stop getting concert alerts. Take this step to save your music data."

The restrictions stop users from adding music to the Facebook profile and receiving personalized concert alerts. iLike has responded by asking users for their email address to send concert alers directly. 

Facebook’s move against iLike is also a bi-product of what they called a wider

campaign of "New Ways to Find and Engage with Your Favorite Applications".  Obviously, new does not always mean better.

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- Nada Stirratt has joined MySpace as Chief Revenue Officer, effective immediately

-  Dustin Finer will serve as MySpace’s Chief People Officer

- Ali Partovi, former CEO of iLike, will serve as Senior Vice President of Business Development based in San Francisco.

- Hadi Partovi, former president of iLike, will serve as Senior Vice President of Technology based in Seattle.

Stirratt will lead global sales and strategy for MySpace and focus on developing new advertising products as well as "creating unique opportunities for both marketers and users." Stirratt will be based in New York and report to MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta.

"Our commitment to creating an exceptional user experience includes innovating in the advertising space, and I’m confident Nada is the right person to lead this important area of our business," said Van Natta. "Nada’s appointment signals our desire to create great experiences for users and advertisers as well as our continued drive to bring top-tier talent into the company."

Finer’s responsibilities as Chief People Officer include HR, facilities, and IT. Ali Partovi was brought in for developing strategic relationships and widening the partner network. Hadi Partovi will bolster MySpace’s Seatte-based team, unify the MySpace and iLike teams under one roof, and grow the Seattle team behind products like MySpace Mail and IM.

The call marked the first time Van Natta’s made a public statement since becoming CEO, and parts of it were very much scripted and by-the-numbers.  Take, for example, what Van Natta cited as the first of three reasons MySpace acquired iLike: a "relentless pursuit of innovation."

But reason number two – a "shared belief in open content distribution" – made for a more original sound bite.  And although the third reason (an interest in bringing world-class talent into all areas of MySpace) was basically a compliment aimed at iLike’s team, it led to the interesting remark that we should "expect to see continued news about great talent coming to MySpace."

As for some other facts, Van Natta emphasized that MySpace Inc. is making this acquisition separate from MySpace Music, while saying that "MySpace Music has been doing extremely well" and will be around for "years and years to come."

He also, with respect to any complications that could result from iLike’s ties to Facebook, said he thinks social networks will be "thrilled" that MySpace is "going to be making iLike an even richer experience within their environment."

Finally, we should report that Van Natta did not disclose any terms of the deal.

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.

For example, if you have a blog and have Google Friend Connect with this gadget set up, people can login and add songs to the playlist. The site administrator still retains ultimate control of the playlists and can add and delete songs at will. Any visitors to that blog will be able to listen to songs from the playlist at their own will. Who said music on websites is annoying? Ok, a lot of people said that.

If you have Google Friend Connect, and wish to add the iLike social playlist gadget simply:

1. Sign in at google.com/friendconnect
2. Click "Social Gadgets" to find the "Playlist Gadget
3. Select "Playlist Gadget" and a sniipet of code will be generated for you to paste in your site’s HTML.

Google Friend Connect Product Manager Mussie Shore suggests adding the "Wall Gadget" as well. "Music can be a great conversation starter," says Shore. That’s actually not a bad point from a networking perspective.

The company now says it has 30 million registered users and will allow them to listen to entire songs rather than 30-second snippets. The full song streaming is via a partnership with Rhapsody.

iLike also announced an ad platform for concert promoters, artists and bands, that allows them to target users based on musical taste and location.

In addition developers will soon be able to add music to their Web sites via iLike. The company says it will launch this quarter and will enable developers to add song playback (songs and playlists) to their Web sites or Facebook applications. 

iLike says that its music applications have become popular on major social networks including Facebook, Orkut and hi5. Full song playback will soon be available on iLike’s music application on Facebook.

Users can listen to 25 full songs a month for free, at which time they will be asked to sign up for a Rhapsody account or listen to 30 second song samples. Artists and labels will be paid each time their music is played.

  "Historically, iLike has focused on serving fans, artists and labels. Today, we’re pleased to expand the iLike community by empowering two new groups: concert promoters and third-party  [application/website] developers," said Ali Partovi, CEO of iLike.

The entire album will be streamed on the site a week before it is released to the public on April 1st. Hopefully the servers will hold up.

Music is social. Music is current and everchanging. And most of all, music requires musicians. The winners in the music business of tomorrow are individuals and organizations that create communities, connect people, spread ideas and act as the hub of the wheel… indispensable and well-compensated.

-Seth Godin

Michael Stipe told Billboard.com, “you can either go with it or sit back and watch it happen, and I would rather be out on the field than in the bleachers.”

Here’s another smart move by Stipe – on March 24 they’ll also release an exclusive video of the band talking about the album. Now let’s hope ilike’s servers can handle the load.

R.E.M. also launched a web site with video footage for fans to use to make their own video for R.E.M.’s  first single from the album – “Supernatural Superserious.” They also release new footage each night for ninety days at Ninetynights.com. Today is night 71.

On their blog iLike said they have over 15 million users. They stream music automatically on other networks like Facebook, Ticketmaster, Ask.com, iTunes, Windows Media Player, MySpace, Hi5, and Orkut. There avid supporters of Google’s OpenSocial that will further expand the social networks their applications will be compatible with.

iLike is privately funded and the investors include Tickemaster, Khosha Ventures, Bob Pittman as well as various other investors. I wonder how long until they’re acquired…

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A video showing Bono singing “Wave of Sorrow” is also available through iLike.com (where you don’t need to sign up for anything in order to see it).  Here are links to both places, but to give you fair warning: the audio quality is pretty terrible, and I’m not sure the song is all that great, anyway.

Oh, well.  In terms of how this came about, Brendon Chase writes, “Marc Bodnick sits on the board of both iLike and a venture capital firm, Elevation — the same VC firm that Bono is involved in.”  And it’s not exactly as if this were a poor business decision, since the existence of this article and many others testifies to the PR benefits.

So, U2, iLike, and Facebook are set.  What about other social networks and sites?  Their loss.  Even something that doesn’t directly compete with Facebook or iLike – YouTube – seems to have been intentionally left out of the loop; as videos pop up, they’re getting quickly pulled down again due to the always-annoying “copyright claim by a third party.”

Congrats to Facebook and iLike, then, for getting an apparent U2 exclusive.  Also, fans who want to get a much better version of “Wave of Sorrow” need only wait until November 20th, when the remastered and expanded version of Joshua Tree will be released.

As CNET points out, Bono is on the board of Elevation Partners, which is an investor in iLike — and Valleywag’s Megan McCarthy notes that the connections are even more intertwined than just that if you look closer — but nevertheless, I think it’s a great idea.

The song is a preview of a tune called Waves of Sorrow, and it’s a nice long clip of Bono talking about the inspiration for the song and then kind of singing along and talking about it as he sings it. I admit that I’m a U2 fan (although the Bono “saviour of the world” act gets a little thin at times), but in any case I think it’s a pretty interesting use of Facebook.

After just three days of being up on Facebook’s iLike page and available to be added to users’ iLike widgets (and displayed in their feeds, of course) the song has more than 1.3 million fans, and there are over 9,000 wall posts. Will Bono be reading each one? Somehow I doubt it. In other iLike news, Billboard reports that the company has signed a deal for exclusive content with Keith Urban.C

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• "pre-created" pages for 160,000+ artists, so that the artist doesn’t have to go through the hassle of uploading all their content to create yet another new band profile
• opened a "Universal Artist Dashboard" so an artist can control their presence across many channels from single place – i.e post a new concert and reach fans across iLike.com, Facebook, iTunes/WMP desktops and thanks to Google’s OpenSocial soon Bebo, orkut, MySpace, Friendster and scores of other sites
• launched new apps for Facebook Pages including Songs, Concerts,and iCast

Late yesterday, we asked iLike spokesperson Emily Glassman for more details:

Hypebot: When do you expect to add MySpace and other OpenSocial sites?

Glassman: Coming soon. We will make individual press announcements in the future, providing launch dates and more details.

Hypebot: What is the cost of The Dashboard to artists and labels?

Glassman: These services with remain free to artists and labels.

Glassman: "We’ve (also) started an autoupdate for all of our iTunes/Windows Media Player Sidebar users which will add an “Artists” tab to the Sidebar. This new functionality will display a users music newsfeed inside of their Sidebar, providing frequent bulletins about a user’s favorite artists…It’s a simple and convenient way to find out if an artist you like has added new tour dates, (etc)…"

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