iLike

Azhar Chougle recently invited me to join a service called iLike which is a music recommendation site. When I first heard its description, a brand new service to help you organize your music, share your music tastes, and discover new music through your friends., I thought it was pretty much a clone of last.fm and it pretty much is, though it does differ.

My first impressions of the site were missed. It looks very light and simple, and Web 2.0 because of that, but it also lacks a page title! A <title> would really benefit the site on search engines and just make it look slightly more professional.

iLike, as you may have guessed from its name, integrates with iTunes. If you download it, it plugs into iTunes and sends what you’re listening to, and allows you to discover new artists, create 1 click playlists and see what your friends are listening to. Remind anyone of last.fm? Last.fm still has many advantages, most importantly is that it supports other media players than iTunes. Personally, I detest iTunes and I’m a VLC and Winamp guy.

If you don’t wish to use iTunes, you can select artists you like from a list. However, the songs you play are not displayed on the site and your list isn’t automatically updated. An idea would be for them to create plug-ins for other media players or to simply use last.fm feeds.

iLike, much like last.fm, provides lists of people who have similar musical taste as you, as well as links to your friend’s profiles.

iLike, interestingly, allows you to preview copyrighted songs and songs from GarageBand. I like the way it supports unsigned artists by using GarageBand, and also how it allows you to download the full MP3 from GarageBand for free. This is a good way to attempt to share music free and legally, as well as promoting unsigned bands. The previewing function is somewhat like last.fm’s, though last.fm doesn’t integrate with GarageBand at all and plays songs from signed bands over its radio stations.

iLike’s design is very Web 2.0. It is very heavy on white and employs a lot of other light colours. This is much less heavy on the eyes than last.fm .

Overall, iLike seems a bit like last.fm clone. However, it lacks the support from the record industry last.fm has and only supports iTunes (it is targetting a much smaller audience than last.fm, though this isn’t a bad thing). Then again, iLike is still only in invite-only beta (if anyone wants an invite, please just comment) and it may well yet develop.