I like iLike

Computers and the internet have changed the face of music. I remember downloading a 30 second audio sample of some popular Huey Lewis song on my Amiga back in the mid-80s and being blown away by the whole concept of sampling. I even bought a sampler dongle for that computer and did it myself (I still remember listening to Elton John's Candle in the Wind piano solo over and over, trying to figure out how to play it).

Then came MP3s, Napster, LaunchCast, BitTorrent, MySpace music, All Music Guide, YouTube, iMeem, SeeqPod, Pandora, JukeFly... the list goes on. And now iLike is part of that list.

iLike is a pretty deep product, but at its core, it is a place to list all of the artists that you like, and get up-to-date information about them. There is a certain set of artists for me (and others I presume) where I'm such a big fan, I want to know every new song & album that they release (even if they are buried on soundtracks or compilations), and I want to know when they are having a concert near me.

It's amazing that such a simple need took so long to get filled. In fact I'm really surprised Amazon doesn't have this as a feature. I already use Amazon to mine for music I don't know about. It's through this I discovered Toad the Wet Sprocket doing a down-tempo cover of Rock and Roll All Night on a Kiss tribute album. But it's a labor-intensive process. I want a service to do this work for me.

I'm not sure that iLike is perfect here, but they do have an RSS feed of news for all of my favorite artists, and it already notified me that Ben Folds' new album is coming out in September. Cool. I can't wait.