MySpace looks all set to acquire iLike for $20 Million

Multiple sources have confirmed about the new deal of  MySpace in acquiring the popular music service iLike, the deal is expected to be close this week.

This would probably considered as MySpace’s first acquisition since new CEO Owen Van Natta took charge of the company in April 2009. The price is “around $20 million.”

iLike is the top music application on Facebook, Bebo, Hi5 and just about every other social network other than MySpace, which has MySpace Music and was launched in late 2006. It is a social music commendation service that now has more than 50 million registered users. It provides you with tracks what you listen to and like and recommendations on new music data as well as what your friends are listening to. Just last week iLike launched their own music download store.

It also hosts band pages which are the second of popularity in MySpace Music. By this deal, MySpace will set their already leading position as the most popular online identity for bands. Details are still soaring in but at first blush the deal is particularly interesting for two reasons.

First nearly 10 million users of Facebook uses iLike application every month and iLike also has a key part in Facebook’s what-to-do-about-music constant struggles. In simple words iLike is deep integrated into the Facebook experience and now MySpace is going to own this.

Second its MySpace not MySpace Music joint venture with the music labels.

Founders Ali Partovi, Hadi Partovi and Nat Brown, and the underlying technology are the key players involved in this deal.

Competitor Last.fm was acquired by CBS in 2007 for $280 million. iLike has 3 million monthly unique visitors. June 2009 Comscore stats show Last.fm with 12.9 million monthly unique visitors. In Q4 2008 Ticketmaster wrote down a number of their venture investments, including a $5.8 million charge for iLike. Internally, they valued that $13.3 million investment at just $7.5 million.

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