MySpace to acquire social music service iLike for $20 million
News Corp.-owned social networking site MySpace is expected to close a deal to acquire social music service iLike this week, according to reports.
The deal, as detailed by TechCrunch (techmeme), will be the company's first acquisition since chief executive Owen Van Natta took reins of the company in April 2009.
The price is “around $20 million," a source told TechCrunch.
iLike, which launched in late 2006 (despite the name, it's not affiliated with Apple), is a social music recommendation service that tracks music that users like listening to and offers recommendations on new music based on behavior.
With more than 50 million registered users, iLike is the top music application on several social networking sites, including Facebook (10 million users alone), Bebo, and Hi5.
Until now, MySpace has addressed the music community with "MySpace Music," dedicated pages for bands and recording artists.
With iLike's acquisition, MySpace doubly-reinforces its place as the go-to place for musicians. It also puts the company in a dominant position within rival Facebook's own site.
The move also heats up music-streaming site competition. iLike is, in many respects, similar to Last.fm, which is owned by ZDNet parent company CBS.
TechCrunch's Michael Arrington writes:
Competitor Last.fm was acquired by CBS in 2007 for $280 million. June 2009 Comscore stats show Last.fm with 12.9 million monthly unique visitors. iLike had just 3 million monthly unique visitors, but that doesn’t take into account the massive usage of the service on social networks.
Interestingly, iLike launched its own music download store just last week.