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iLike is the newest in a long line of specialized social communities that allows you to integrate your love of social networking with your playlists. Not only is iLike a great place to meet fellow music fans, it allows you to install and use an iTunes sidebar that will allow you to share your playlists readily from iTunes to the world.

The Social Network

You can’t really review iLike.com without mentioning a dozen other social networks in comparison. Suffice it to say, they don’t necessarily provide anything new that has not been done a hundred times before. However, the heavy emphasis on music interaction and the inspired integration of an iTunes side bar plug-in both make iLike a premiere location to start marketing your music to more possible listeners.

The Side Bar

The iTunes sidebar installs directly into iTunes for any iLike user who downloads it, and includes two lists, one of related music that will provide recommended music based on what is in the user’s iTunes library and a second list entitled “Free Music from New Artists” which provides free tracks that bands can upload to GarageBand.com. The recommendations listed here will change every time the user plays a new song and is almost always rotating, ensuring mass exposure.

In addition to listening to free music from unsigned bands, users can listen to what their friends are listening to by viewing a second tab on the sidebar with those songs listed. This will also allow users to keep track of messages they might receive via their iLike account.

The Profile

The result is a profile that essentially looks like an HTML version of your iTunes interface. It will create automatic playlists with popular, recent, and most active tracks, and consistently tries to create habits that allow it to make new suggestions. It will also recommend people to each other that might share similar music tastes.

In addition, people can share their music tastes with each other simply by having the sidebar installed to track recent listens and popular tracks. Every track listed has expanded information with artist information, samples, other related songs, and profiles for bands that are on iLike.

The Bottom Line

Basically, with iLike you are getting the ideal integration of your desktop music library with a massive music community. For bands, this means a whole new way to interact with fans. You can create an iLike account and share your own favorite music. Then you can create a GarageBand account and start uploading your tracks which will then be featured in peoples’ profiles automatically as recommended tracks. By tapping into the hundreds of thousands of users who actively use iLike, you can gain free, automatic exposure and build you friend and fan base at the same time.