Music service iLike, best known for third-party applications on platforms like Facebook, made its big iPhone app launch today. The company has rolled out an app for alerts about local concerts, and also launched its previously announced program for bands and artists to create custom fan applications.
Apple still has to approve the "Local Concerts" app, according to a release, but iLike is excited about its potential impact regardless.
"It's something that we really felt was a good idea on paper as we started developing it," iLike CEO Ali Partovi told CNET News, "but as it reached completion and we started using it ourselves it really started seeming like a killer app."
iLike already has had a concert app in the iTunes Store. The company didn't promote it much, Partovi said, because the iPhone 3.0 software was what really made the app worthwhile, and so iLike was waiting until that came out.
"We found that there really were a few key capabilities that the iPhone OS didn't support at the time," he explained, referring specifically to push notifications and some software tweaks that enable better personalization. So the revamped iLike concerts app, thanks to iPhone software upgrades, will scan the music selection on an iPhone or iPod Touch, and send pop-up alerts when a band or artist that the user listens to will be in town.
"It turns the iPod into much more of a live device to be connected to the world of live music," Partovi said of the free app.
The custom artist apps, meanwhile, haven't changed much from when iLike originally announced the program in May. Over 250 artists have signed on to the program, the company said, including Pete Yorn, Reba McIntire, and Enrique Iglesias. iLike takes half the revenues from sales of the apps, and charges a $99 fee with the right to serve ads if the artist in question decides to offer its custom app for free.
CNET News reported last month that iLike was also in talks with the major music labels to open a download store, after a deal to offer full-length songs through subscription service Rhapsody failed to materialize.
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