MySpace buying iLike

Reports are coming in this morning that MySpace is ponying up $20 million for iLike. It's more than a little weird that MySpace is purchasing this app that was being used as the default music application for their biggest competitor in the social networking scene, Facebook.

Seems to me that a) MySpace will somehow screw this up, and b) Facebook looks stupid for not buying one of their most popular apps when they had the opportunity and handed it to their competition instead.

I promise you that this stuff is very important to anyone who is an independent musician. It will affect you, if it hasn't already. Also interesting is that the purchaser here is reportedly MySpace... not MySpace Music, which has its own deals with labels that would probably conflict in some way with the purchase of a music sharing service.

This {censored} is getting too complicated, I'm telling you.

Hey Jeff,

Its too complicated, thats why I don`t stay on top of all this. I have my website, a ReverbNation page and links to purchase my music. Aside from that, I just can`t keep up with everything. I hardly go on my myspace page, its too archaic for me and time consuming. Facebook is a lot more my pace and I like the ease and flow of interacting with people.

Thanks for the update.

Same here, Ernest.

It's amazing the speed at which fortunes, alliances, advantages, and trends can change.

Time was, MySpace seemed tailor-made for musicians and FaceBook was the stuff of attention-starved teenagers. Now, all my middle-aged friends (including everyone I knew from high school) are all on FB, and it is virtually unavoidable. MySpace seems to be on the ropes, as far as social networking sites.

But what has changed technologically? MySpace still does what it did when it was the site of choice for independent musicians. FaceBook has gotten more ubiquitous, true, but it's still largely the stuff of "Just bathed my cat ... deciding whether to watch Mad Men or True Blood" (though we now have Twitter to handle such vital updates when compulsive texters go mobile).

But I digress. I'm hoping that MySpace doesn't screw this up, because despite their recent missteps and blunders, I feel they can ultimately provide the better tool for musicians.

I know that iLike is on FB but am not really familiar with it. I'd love to hear about the significance and implications of this move, beyond the obvious change of allegiance.

Its too late for MySpace, I fear. Its a dead place, full of bands spamming other bands.

Rather than re-writing someone's more well thought out words...

Linkage to Washington Post story.

Got it, very interesting.

No MySpace, no FaceBook, iTunes, no blog, no web site other than as a file parking space, never even heard of iLike.

What have I missed? Not a way to make money, I hope.

What have I missed? Not a way to make money, I hope.

Mike, these services might be the ONLY way for independent artists to make money today. I'll be the first one to tell you that dealing with them (and their different interfaces and so on) is a pain in the ass. However, for the small percentage of people that actually purchase music, many of them enjoy the convenience of making those purchases immediately, without having to go to another online store such as iTunes.

Since iLike has recently started a retail division, allowing people to directly purchase songs they hear there, and has over 50,000,000 users (mostly Facebook members at the moment), this isn't something that people releasing indie music should ignore.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, unless Facebook is considering buying MySpace.

I'm not entirely kidding. I think MySpace is going down the crapper and Facebook may feel they'll be able to buy all its assets for a song if they wait for the right time.

I think that although most musicians recognized MySpace as a valuable tool for musicians, the technology and the interface have always mostly sucked, and everyone knew it. It was a brilliant idea that was not very well executed. It was slow, buggy, kludgy, the screen is overly cluttered, etc. They were ripe for being overtaken by a competitor.

Facebook proved to be that superior competitor, with a cleaner interface, faster load times, implementation of a lot of cool features that MySpace ultimately ended up imitating (when it can), and so on.

And the ease with which MySpace users could promote their music on MySpace proved to be a double edged sword over time, as the music pages have now become mostly bands spamming other bands.

I don't think you've used Facebook too much if you think that's all it is.

As much as I hate Myspace...

I still use it as my primary booking / communication tool with the local venues. That's just how you book gigs around this area. And until that changes, I'll keep a CLEAN myspace account open.

MySpace is better designed for letting people know about gigs, checking out music, etc. Obviously, it's poorly executed, but we've known that for years. FaceBook, OTOH, is designed for interacting with people, and it's much better at that.

Funny I find Facebook's usability worse than Myspace's, cause of aaaaall the features/crap/apps/this/that all around - sometimes the heirarchy is just confusing. I don't use it though, I have an inferiority complex cause the guy who started it and is rich is younger than me

This thread really isn't about MySpace vs. Facebook; it's about things that affect your ability to sell music, and to whom, and how much you'll make for sales under different retail platforms. I know that at least some of you would like to have people buy your music.

I have an inferiority complex cause the guy who started it and is rich is younger than me

Get used to that, pal.

This thread really isn't about MySpace vs. Facebook; it's about things that affect your ability to sell music, and to whom, and how much you'll make for sales under different retail platforms. I know that at least some of you would like to have people buy your music.

So how much music have you actually sold via Myspace, Facebook, iLike or iTunes?

So how much music have you actually sold via Myspace, Facebook, iLike or iTunes?

I don't really discuss my income on public forums. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone, actually.

However, every independent artist should be aware of these tools for sales, and the ways they work (i.e., the amount the artist receives from a $0.99 download on iTunes via Tunecore versus the same $0.99 sale on iLike). Since I am going to be releasing a new album within the next couple of months, it could be that these details are more important to me than to other folks.

Eh income shmincome. Everyone's within their right to withhold that information but it's just money in the end -- if you live comfortably enough with that amount, what one says about it means nothing. And if one is judged by how much they make in any endeavor then it's not their problem.

Oh, I know that, sad as it is. Or maybe great as it is, depending on your perspective. It means that you have to take care of one more thing (or three or four more things) besides writing and/or playing music. But it also means that everyone has an opportunity to be a star and make money with music rather than just the ones who get a "label deal."

I'm not that kind of independent artist though. Think I could get a a few thousand people to download a product review or a technical article for 99 cents a pop?

Everyone's right, this whole internet thing is getting way too confusing. So I have an idea!

Musicians could transfer their songs to a physical piece of plastic, which could then be sold to end users for a reasonable fee. If a player was developed for this (let's call it a "compact disc player" for now), then the music could start instantly, without having to wait for it to download! Also from what I understand, information storage technology is quite inexpensive these days, so these "compact discs" could have really high-quality versions of songs instead of compromised MP3s.

What's more, if the hard disk in your iPod dies, you would merely re-transfer the music from the "compact disc" to the iPod! And for the coup de grace, the disc's packaging could include extras like a nice cover, maybe a booklet inside, and so on. And you wouldn't even need to get a computer involved, unless you wanted to transfer the songs to your portable music player.

I know it sounds like a crazy idea in the internet age, but I think it has potential!!

(Ignoring massive sarcasm)

Here's the problem with that, Craig: if you don't tailor your product's distribution to where people like to spend what little amounts of their money that they're willing to part with, you're going to wind up with a large collection of silvery round coasters. It would be like having to go to your local cow farm every time you need a glass of milk. Even if that milk is great, most people will opt for the kind in their convenient local grocery store.

What it comes down to is that you can't use 100% of your efforts in any one direction. You DO need to replicate discs for physical distribution and you DO need to take advantage of any legit digital distribution. Choosing one or the other is music sales suicide.

I am doing both. So now, people have all kinds of options as to how to not buy my music.

Good idea, but it's still digital media, so it would be trivial to give copies of this "compact disk" to all of your friends, which would eat into your profits.

Now, if instead of this plastic, thing, which I assume is digital since it sounds like it resembles the "CD-ROM" you were to use a rotating disk with grooves cut into it which are analog representations of the music, it would be much more difficult to copy, and all but the most swashbuckling pirates would be dissuaded by the need to make a real-time copy (which may mean that they actually listen to it.

I figure if the disk was about 10 inches in diameter and rotated at 78 RPM, you could put a three to five minute song on it, and another one on the other side. That would be enough music for anyone.

I don't really discuss my income on public forums. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone, actually. However, every independent artist should be aware of these tools for sales, and the ways they work (i.e., the amount the artist receives from a $0.99 download on iTunes via Tunecore versus the same $0.99 sale on iLike). Since I am going to be releasing a new album within the next couple of months, it could be that these details are more important to me than to other folks.

These details are very important to me as well. I just wanted to clarify why you felt they were important. It's just that I have spoken to a lot of people who are trying to sell music on Myspace, and iTunes for that matter, and I have not met many who have actually earned any significant income from them.

I have been seeing a royalty check from iTunes of about $7.61 cents per month. I have no problem discusssing the success or failure of a distribution system based on my own experience. Reality will trump fantasy every time.

I think that it is very important that independent artists who are actually selling music (not just talking about it) share their experience and tell the truth about what they are seeing out there. How else is someone who comes to a forum like this looking for answers going to find them?

That is why I have made it a point to find and talk to artists who are doing the myspace, or youtube, or facebook thing, and finding out what is really happening out there; not just figures and stats from some writer who isn't even in the music biz.

Just sayin'............

Ah, I see. Well, to clarify, I'm a typical independent musician with no financial backing for brick-and-mortar retail distribution or large-scale advertising/marketing as one would optimistically get from a larger label, and I don't tour in a traditional sense either. So these things become vitally important to have any hope at all of selling music. That's the perspective, and I'm happy to have clarified it for you.

I do, however, promote my stuff in ways that a lot of other people might not, and have a relatively good-sized fan base who have been awaiting the album's release for some time. For them, and possible future people I can turn on to my tunes, I think it's great that I get these types of opportunities to connect with people. I'd think there are probably others here who may not be aware of these possibilities for their own music.

Perhaps a more interesting question on an overall basis is how many people on SSS have ever tried to sell their music under any circumstances? It might be a smaller number than you think, and some more of them might want to do so if they really knew how to use these tools.