It’s Official: MySpace Aquires Music Rec Service iLike

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It’s Official: MySpace Aquires Music Rec Service iLike

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The speculation—and negotiations—are over. MySpace just announced the acquisition of iLike. More to come as MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta holds a press call but you can see the press release below. The acquisition was made by MySpace Inc. and does not include the MySpace Music joint venture. The iLike management will stay in place, including founders Ali and Hadi Partovi, with headquarters remaining in Seattle. And Van Natta promises that in the short term, at least, iLike users won’t see a difference. Some other notes from the call:

—Most significant aspect: Van Natta says iLike won’t be limited to just music and will extend out to all entertainment. Van Natta later said one of the biggest ways you could see that would be extending the recommendation engine beyond music. No details.

—Facebook: A non-answer from the former Facebook exec when it comes to iLike’s relationship with the rival social net. He hopes all the social networks will be excited. (Translation: The flying monkeys were really nice, gentle creatures.)

—Why the delay: Van Natta says in nearly 10 years of deals this was actually one of the smoother one’s he’s been involved with—and he just gave in to TechCrunch’s desire to say (without naming names) that Kara Swisher was wrong about any delay being due to a tax issue or a canceled board meeting. (AllThingsD’s MediaMemo quickly swooped in to address that, citing a Partovi e-mail to investors at IAC. I’m a little confused by that since IAC spin-off Ticketmaster was the one with 25 percent equity in iLike and the one that took the write down, but, hey, maybe there was more. Note: The post has been updated to clarify that the e-mails were with IAC’s ~~tax guru Greg Morrow~~ general counsel Gregg Winiarski, who dealt with some iLike issues before the spin, and the iLike board. Some e-mails now included.)

—Ticket sales: iLike is already known for ticket sales, while MySpace Music is just getting into it. “We’re going to create a better experience combined than you could see on our own.” (Translation: We’ll be using iLike to power ticket sales.)

LOS ANGELES – August 19, 2009 – MySpace today announced an agreement to acquire iLike, a leading social music discovery service. The acquisition brings together two companies who share a common vision revolving around social discovery and distribution of quality content.

“The iLike acquisition advances our relentless pursuit of innovation and the need to create new distributed social experiences in music and beyond,” said Owen Van Natta, Chief Executive Officer of MySpace. “We are deeply committed to bringing world class talent into all areas of the company and this acquisition demonstrates our focus on this objective.”

Brothers Ali and Hadi Partovi founded iLike in 2006, and in just two years made it the largest music application across all social networks with 55 million total users and 1.5 billion monthly impressions. The entire iLike team will stay intact including, CEO Ali Partovi, President Hadi Partovi and CTO Nat Brown. All three are seasoned entrepreneurs who’ve held executive positions at both start-ups and Fortune 100 companies. Prior to iLike, Ali Partovi founded and sold LinkExchange to Microsoft and Hadi Partovi independently co-founded and sold TellMe Networks, also to Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT). Hadi Partovi also incubated Start.com (now Live.com). Brown has a deep and respected history as an early architect at Microsoft, and he was involved in the creation the first Xbox, .NET/CLR, and ActiveX/COM/OLE.

“MySpace’s strengths have been a long-time source of inspiration for iLike,” said Hadi Partovi, President of iLike. “Combining MySpace’s existing platform, reach and resources with iLike’s syndication network and social discovery tools creates the potential for truly exciting innovation and commerce across any vertical entertainment category—our combined assets now span all the major social networks. I’m enthusiastic about what this combination will mean for our users, artists, advertisers, and our staff. We are beginning an exciting new journey together.”

iLike users and the artist community should expect the iLike experience to be unaffected by the acquisition. iLike will remain headquartered in Seattle.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.

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