iLike: a review

Thanks to Erin and Thomas for inviting me to iLike. I had never heard of this site before.

As I've mentioned in a previous Blathering, I don't listen to the radio, and Jeff and I don't have cable tv. I discover new music almost entirely through recommendations from friends. I used to also find new music through Pandora, but unfortunately that service can no longer offer access to users outside of the U.S.

Things I like about iLike so far:

I feel lucky to have several friends whose musical tastes have overlapped enough with mine that I can leech off their superior music-surfing experience and find out about new bands. However, one of my problems is that I haven't yet developed an organized system to keep track of all these great bands and vocalists in one place.

iLike offers a system of tracking artists I like and songs I like that's easy to maintain. You just pull up that artist's listing or even a specific song, click on the "iLike" link, and it's automatically added to your list along with a link to iTunes, an option to add your own comment, videos, other iLike users who like the band, a link to the band's main iLike page where you can explore their other albums and songs as well finding out where they're touring.

iLike seems to be a good way of helping to promote lesser-known bands. I've already checked out some groups I hadn't heard about before because they were on iLike lists of listeners with similar tastes, or were on the "similar style/music" lists of bands and songs I liked.

I like the clean design. It's easy to navigate around and figure out how things work.

I like the fact that it is well-integrated with iTunes, iPods, Facebook and MySpace.

The downloadable iLike Sidebar plugin was easy to install and (I wanted to test this) de-install. My friend Reid is having problems, though, so perhaps I was just lucky. With the Sidebar installed, people on your Friends list can see what you're currently playing on iTunes, and you can see what they're listening to.

Things I don't like about iLike so far:

I would like to be able to turn off the timestamp which indicates when I last listened to a song on iTunes; I don't necessarily want people knowing when I'm home. Yes, you can restrict profile viewing to a Friends list, but I've never had much faith in so-called "locked" or password protected pages. I've written to iLike with a suggestion of more flexibility privacy options, ideally like the ones on Facebook (which I'm still enjoying, by the way, especially now that so many friends have joined).

The default for Library and Playlists should be "hidden", not "shown". I can easily imagine a scenario where an iLike user hasn't used the service in a while and forgets that his or her info is public, creates what they think is a private playlist but is actually being broadcast.

There should be an option of hiding or clearing "Most played" and "Recently played." Again, there needs to be more flexibility in privacy options.

Playlists should be updated more often. At present, they're only updated on iLike every two weeks.

"Recently played" lists don't include music played on iPods away from the computer. I listen to most of my music away from the computer; most of the music I currently play in the office is while I'm working, which is mainly music without words and background music. The FAQ says that the cumulative "most played" lists are eventually updated with synching.

You can't edit your song comments. You have to create a new song comment, then delete your old listing.

As a musician, adding your band to iLike is a hassle. I had to add Urban Tapestry to iLike by creating a Garageband.com page. So far I've only uploaded one clip (The Lady) and was going to add others.



But now I find that there are TWO Urban Tapestry pages on iLike. This one (the one I registered on Garageband) and this one (the one that is created when people play our songs on iTunes, which we can't modify). This majorly sucks. In this FAQ explanation, iLike explains they are in Beta format, so hopefully this problem should be solved soon, at which point I'm hoping that combining the stats and info from the two pages isn't going to be too much of a hassle.

But again, iLike is only in Beta. I'm hoping a lot of these glitches are ironed out in the next version. However, they also might start charging a fee, at which point I'll have to decide whether it's worth sticking around or not. Much of that decision will depend on how many of my "Don't Like" items still exist.

Discovering new music:

In filling out the form for Garageband, I had to specify what other groups we sound like, and what groups have influenced us. The latter question was easy, but the first was hard to do objectively.

Thanks to those in LJ for their suggestions! Groups/styles suggested included: Uncle Bonsai, The Roches, The Nields Sisters, Christine Lavin, DaVinci's Notebook, Moxy Fruvous. I haven't heard of some of these, and have already been checking them out in iLike. :-) Anyway, we now have a very fundamental page on iLike which automatically picks up info from Garageband.com.

As I type this Blathering, I started "listening" to all the Urban Tapestry CDs so that their tracks get registered on iLike, but quit when I discovered that the info was being sent to the wrong iLike Urban Tapestry page. :-(

One of my goals for this year: Figure out how to finally get Urban Tapestry on iTunes!

Summary:

I think I'm going to de-install the Sidebar plugin until iLike offers more privacy options; I can't help but get a bit of the "Big Brother" willies when it comes to people knowing what I'm listening to at any given moment, particularly if the timestamp lets people know when I'm home.

BUT iLike offers enough other useful features that I think I'm going to keep experimenting with it even without the Sidebar turned on.



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