Music Sharing Service iLike Launches Developer, Ad PlatformsMusic Sharing Service iLike Launches Developer, Ad Platforms

Music discovery service iLike on Monday unveiled a new ad platform for concert promoters, full-length song playback, and a new plan for music syndication through third-party developers.

Song playback is available immediately through Rhapsody and through iLike.com. It will soon be available on Facebook.

ILike also announced that it reached a new milestone, with more than 30 million registered users.

"Since inception, iLike has always enabled other people to benefit from our reach," Ali Partovi, CEO of iLike, said in a news announcement. "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 or Web site developers."

The new ad platform allows concert promoters, venue owners, booking agents, and indie bands to use self-serve advertising tools to create multimedia ads with music playback and social links. They can target fans based on location and musical tastes instead of keywords, iLike said. The platform also allows bands, promoters, and agents to reach several markets with automatically generated ads with self-populating concert data.

The developers' feature will launch this quarter. It will allow all developers to add song playback to any Web site, as well as Facebook applications. ILike said that it has opened registration for interested developers.

ILike has made full-length song playback available immediately through Rhapsody. It's free for the first 25 plays per month. When listeners reach the limit, they can sign up for a Rhapsody account or listen to 30-second samples.

Artists and labels will earn royalties through Rhapsody's existing agreements. ILike said the plan for playback represents the first "widespread implementation of a scalable model to monetize the enormous potential for music consumption across social networks."