Comments on: ILike (and its apps) show results: It really is helping musicians reach fans across the web

By: Watercooler: Yet another social network app company that’s making money » VentureBeat

Sat, 03 May 2008 06:16:34 +0000

[...] iLike’s success in promoting concerts and in selling tickets through its music applications is any indication, then these non-advertising revenue streams are also quite [...]

By: kevin

kevin — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:18:14 +0000

Isn’t it true that anyone who owns an mp3 of an artist is considered a “fan”? So the number of fans is somewhat inflated–it’s not really an accurate reflection of active fans who follow an artist’s activities? I’ve never gotten clarity on that.

By: Borman

Borman — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:37:07 +0000

In regards to the question asking what % of total sales were digital, in Lady Antebellum’s case, it was 21%. In fact, this was the highest digital sales percentage ever achieved by a country band with a debut album, and far greater than the country music industry average of 4.5 percent digital sales.
Clearly the marketing done for Lady Antebellum on iLike & other online channels are what lead to this large percentage of digital sales & overall success of their album release.

By: Ali Partovi

Ali Partovi — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:31:54 +0000

Hi, I’m the CEO of iLike and I thought I’d chime in with a brief response.

I don’t think any single channel, whether offline or online, can “break” an artist.

However, I do think Eric has correctly observed that online channels in general, and iLike in particular, are showing signs of moving the needle.

Today iLike is consistantly among the top few affiliates of both iTunes and Ticketmaster. What’s more, iLike users acquire 250% more music within the first month of using iLike (per independent research recently conducted by Wharton Business School). The data clearly shows that iLike plays a major role in driving retail.

What we’ve tried to do at iLike is to create a framework where good content rises to the top on its own merit, via both algorithmic recommendations and social / viral spreading. This is an imperfect science and we have a long way to go, but it’s exciting to see early indications that we’re on the right track.

We don’t currently track individual referrals to purchase on a per-song or per-artist basis. Even if we could, I’m not sure that would paint a full picture. The success stories mentioned about (REM and Lady Antebellum) both adopted a very fan-friendly strategy of posting regular video messages over a period of time, building up momentum and awareness in ways that may not be easily tracked, but surely contributed to their phenomenal sales success.

There’s more detail about Lady Antebellum, including a very nice quote from the band, at http://www.iLike.com/press.

By: Record labels fund music discovery site MOG » VentureBeat

Record labels fund music discovery site MOG » VentureBeat — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:40:08 +0000

[...] services every month. MOG, a desktop music player plugin and music fan site perhaps most similar to social network-focused iLike, isn’t too far behind — it has around a million unique users a month, it says. So [...]

By: Record labels fund music discovery site MOG » VentureBeat

Record labels fund music discovery site MOG » VentureBeat — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:40:08 +0000

By: Greg Chappell

Greg Chappell — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:24:34 +0000

ilike is good, but you should check out Last.fm which is even better.

By: ILike (and its apps) show results: It really is helping musicians reach fans across the web « The-social-network.info’s Weblog

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 05:12:47 +0000

[...] Read more and comment here Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)iLike, Billboard Team Up for New Music Charts [...]

By: Eric Eldon

Eric Eldon — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 03:23:26 +0000

@mdg, the rest of your comment negates the first line of your comment.

seriously, i agree with you. my headline says “helping musicians” not “breaking musicians” and in my article, i explain how ilike is part of something bigger. but it’s pretty strong anecdotal evidence that ticketmaster is seeing an effect, and that a lot of people watch videos of musicians through it.

still, there is most definitely a need for cleaner data here, but like most data, the information i currently have available isn’t clean. the best i can do, for now, anyways, is telling what i know.

By: mdg

mdg — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 03:15:30 +0000

Your story negates your headline. ILike and other applications can not take credit for breaking a single artist. In the best case scenario it could be apart of the bigger marketing picture.

The question that should be asked is of the 10k fans how many paid money for the bands music live or otherwise. What % of that number makes up total sales (digital and physical combined).

Looking for fire hose results from applications is misguided. these are tools of incremental impressions and engagment gains not for 1-1 correlation to sales, not now anyway.