Songkick, a site that recommends concerts in your local area based on your preferred artists, has snagged $4.65 million of an anticipated $7.17 million first round of funding, reports VentureWire. The company also aggregates ticket information from 16 sites like StubHub, Ticketweb and Ticketmaster, allowing for one-click purchase.

When VentureBeat last covered the London company in March, we detailed some of its other cool features, including the ability to generate a concert schedule from your personal music library and to compare the popularity of your favorite bands based on various metrics. Now, it also gives you the option to receive alerts when designated artists come to town, and to put a personalized widget showing the tours you’re tracking on your online profile or personal site (heads up, music bloggers). For more on these features and its advertising network Bandsense, see our past coverage here.

Several major competitors are already hot on Songkick’s heals. Online music store PassAlong has launched its own smart concert listing widget, OnTour, also drawing from users’ digital libraries and linking them to tickets, maps to nearby venues and artists’ online discographies. Established music recommendation service iLike has added a “My Concerts” wishlist feature matching upcoming shows to your iTune playlists, and site Bandsintown offers RSS and iCal feeds of concerts based on your favorite artists on iTunes and Last.fm. In this environment, Songkick will need to keep innovating in order to compete.

Songkick was originally backed by Y Combinator in 2007 and raised an estimated $1.1 million in angel funding from the likes of Saul Klein, founding partner of The Accelerator Group, and Jeff Clavier, managing partner of Softech VC, this past June. Index Ventures joined for the recent round.

No information on how long the round will remain open has been disclosed.

ILike, the music startup that’s especially big on Facebook, is out look for an acquirer, according to MediaMemo. “Nothing iminent nor active discussions,” a source close to the company tells me in response. That’s not an outright no, so probably something is going on — maybe a further round of funding? ILike is one of several online music services that have gained millions of users in the last several years by latching on to social networks; others include imeem and Project Playlist. Imeem is also reportedly looking for a buyer, or more funding.

Seattle-based iLike is comprised of its home site, iLike.com, new music site GarageBand.com, plugins for iTunes and Windows Media Player, and a number of music applications on social networks, the largest of which is its collection of apps on Facebook. It has received more than $16 million in funding, including from ticket sales company Ticketmaster.

Web-based music services are great for generating usage but harder to monetize. ILike offers ads, links to digital song purchases on iTunes and Amazon, and directs people to buy concert tickets (through TicketMaster) but it’s not clear how much money it’s making.

Facebook has designated iLike as one of two companies currently in its “Great Apps” program, which gives iLike special advantages like appearing more often in users’ news feeds, and being able to let users invite more of each other to iLike applications. However, Facebook is also currently in talks with iLike and a range of competitors about doing a special deal to build streaming music more deeply into the social network.

Here’s the latest action:

Earnings: Yahoo may shortly be cutting employee compensation – This may be instead of or in addition to planned job cuts.

Earnings: Apple to guide low, as usual — Fortune’s Apple 2.0 blog has a closer look at this historical trend.

Akamai launches ad targeting service — The content delivery network company has bought ad-targeting company Acerno for $95 million, as part of this new focus.

Research in Motion joins Blackberry cross-device application testing service — The service, DeviceAnywhere, lets developers test applications on 100 Blackberry phone models on 16 networks.

Funding slows for cleantech companies — Lower fuel prices and tighter capital markets are, unsurprisingly, the cause. General Electric both makes cleantech equipment and underwrites cleantech projects, but it is getting out of the sector at least until it can get better access to capital.

Web media viewing service Cooliris launches iPhone app — Check it out.

Music service ILike partners with independent online distributor TuneCore — This will allow unsigned artists who use TuneCore to get paid when their music streams through iLike’s applications on social networks.

BusinessWeek: Who might be Obama’s “Chief Technology Officer” (if he wins) — The position would involve trying to increase broadband internet publication across the country.

Texas Instruments earnings down 26 percent — The New York Times has more.

DLA Piper survey: IT execs see more than a year of economic downturn — More on the law firm’s findings, here.

Facebook is perpetually rumored to have some sort of in-house music service in the works. The latest story is a vague piece today in the pseudo-tabloid New York Post. Apparently Facebook has been talking to people in the music industry about partnering with a bunch of streaming media services and record labels to integrate music more deeply into the site.

However, says the Post, “Facebook doesn’t want to bog itself down in securing their own licenses to distribute music or building a proprietary service from scratch, sources said” about the new service.

Oh really?

Time for a little background about what some music services that already exist on Facebook. I’ll explain why I’m not taking this rumor seriously, and why a lot of mainstream reporters probably shouldn’t have.

Facebook has offered a developer platform for more than a year wherein an independent company named iLike has deeply integrated its own music services into the site through applications (screenshot below). Among many other features, you can use iLike apps to stream full songs from Rhapsody, find nearby concerts and buy tickets. The social network has more recently designated iLike a “Great App.” That preference gives iLike such advantages as a higher chance of a user’s actions — say, going to a concert — showing up in their friends’ Facebook news feeds. ILike also offers a streaming music platform, so other third party apps can integrate its Rhapsody-powered streaming music into their apps.

Let me rephrase the above: If Facebook isn’t going to bother with licensing or building its own service, and instead has condoned iLike’s existing features that do exactly those things, then what is left for Facebook to do?

Oh wait, hold on, Facebook already has its own “Music” service of sorts (screenshot below), that has mostly lain dormant since it launched last year. The service includes ways for promoting bands within Facebook, including a bunch of Facebook-built apps for sharing information about music. The Music page even incorporates one of iLike’s apps, iCast — a bulletin system to help musicians get the word out about news.

Facebook last updated its “Music” page on September 3rd, with a brief note and a link to a case study on how artists can promote themseles using Facebook’s fan “Pages” in conjunction with its advertising service.

Considering everything I’ve said so far, I’m pretty curious as to what the Post article actually meant by this line:

The surging social-networking giant is talking to a number of song-streaming services and music community sites, including Rhapsody.com, iMeem.com, iLike.com, and Lala.com, about an outsourcing deal that would more deeply integrate their music experience into Facebook, sources familiar with the situation said.

The only thing I can imagine Facebook looking into now is a more advanced form of promoting features that already exist. Maybe it is working on some sort of co-sponsorship ad package, where it helps a musician do an album launch or something? To get an idea of what that might look like, Facebook Film, a Facebook-created page similar to Facebook Music, has recently been publicizing a Patagonia-sponsored surfing movie called One Track Mind.

Here’s Facebook’s response to my query about the Post article:

Facebook is committed to its mission to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected, and we recognize that music sharing plays a part in that as well. We cannot comment on specific initiatives, but are always talking with potential partners to pursue opportunities that help us deliver on our mission.

The one thing I agree with the Post about is that whatever Facebook could be working on, it probably won’t resemble the standalone “MySpace Music” site. Other publications that track Facebook relatively closely have also found the whole article a bit silly. As Nick O’Neill of AllFacebook puts it “[t]he future of a Facebook music service still seems unclear at this point, but you can never give up a good opportunity to speculate about future plans!”

Which brings me back to my headline. The post did a hilarious Photoshop job (top) combining Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s head with an old photo of Guns N Roses guitarist Slash. “I think Zuckerberg looks cute in a wig,” was iLike chief executive Ali Partovi’s only response when I asked him for comment on the article.

Indeed, my two big takeways from it are both in regards to the photo: 1) Mark, seriously consider being Slash for Halloween and 2) please never ever actually grow your hair out into a ‘fro.

ILike, the music company with popular applications on social networks including Facebook, Orkut and hi5, is making itself a platform — a trend among Silicon Valley web companies these days. Today, it will let other developers easily access its library of streaming music to include within their own applications. So if you have a Facebook game application, you could include licensed music in it through iLike. For example, Social Gaming Networks’ app “Free Gifts” will let you send a song with a virtual gift.

You can make playlists within other applications within social network, or within customized interfaces on other web sites. Features include a way to display a single song track, and an option to let users edit which tracks are in the playlist. Music sources include Rhapsody’s streaming music service, which iLike obtained access to earlier this year, and its other sources.

To be clear, competitors like imeem have long let users create Flash widgets that feature your playlist — popular on many social networks, including MySpace. ILike’s widgets use HTML and Javascript code for easier implementation by developers within other applications. You can play around with it here.

ILike itself relies on platforms like Facebook’s to reach users, so yeah, this is getting meta. Another example of this phenomenon is Meebo’s platform for instant messaging features, also used by many third party applications.

Already well-connected in the developer community, iLike has continued to manage its relations well. Other partners that will use this platform include Flixster, Watercooler, Connected Weddings, Slide, and Mesmo TV. Google, Evite and TypePad are also integrating iLike’s music.

Meanwhile, five of the top ten applications on Facebook will include iLike music integration, the company says. It is also one of two “Great Apps,” a designation given by Facebook to third-party applications that exemplify what it considers “good” app behavior. This status means iLike gets special access to users. For example, when a user takes an action on an iLike app that triggers a news feed item for their friends to see, this item is shown at the same frequency within a given users’ feed as Facebook’s own items. Developers of third party applications have expressed concern that their applications aren’t being given equal treatment within the news feed, versus Facebook’s own items, such as status updates or photos.

ILike is even partnered with Facebook itself to jointly promote a new album from the electronica group Thievery Corporation.

Meanwhile, iLike says it is by far the leading music application on hi5, and on Google’s Orkut, two other large social networks. It is a poster child for Google’s rival platform, OpenSocial, used by these networks and most others.

The Rhapsody service is a revenue-sharing deal, but the company is making money a variety of other ways — that it’s not saying too much about right now. It gets a cut from referring users to purchase track on Apple’s iTunes and Amazon’s music store. It also sells links to buy concert tickets for a strategic investor in the company, Ticketmaster. It also has deals with ring tone companies. It also has a variety of ads. On the ad front, it recently launched a concert ad service, to help promoters reach fans near live acts. The company offers a central administrative system for artists to manage their presence on its application in Facebook and other social networks.

Seattle-based iLike has close relationships with the music industry, and large acts are using it. But chief executive Ali Partovi says ads for concerts and other forms of revenue will only gradually shift away from traditional media. Artists still rely on multiple promoters if they’re traveling widely, and booking agents as well as artists’ managers often want to approve marketing. This platform is another way for iLike to be everywhere before that change fully happens.

Two announcements this week show how some of those silly MySpace widgets and annoying Facebook applications are becoming real businesses.

First, the rock band R.E.M. is going to release its latest album Accelerate through iLike, streaming the entire album across iLike’s Facebook, Hi5 and Bebo applications and its other services. It is the first time that a band this large has released an album through iLike.

Second, widget service provider Gydget has struck a deal with indie music marketer and distributor The Orchard, to distribute music through widgets on MySpace and other social networks.

R.E.M. is working with iLike because the Seattle-based company has sewn together its many properties into a service for musicians that it calls a “universal artist dashboard” (our coverage). This dashboard is proving useful for major acts, like R.E.M., because they can publish a new album, a demo song clip, a video, a concert schedule or other information on social sites and music services across the web.

Here’s how: ILike quickly became the dominant music-related service on Facebook, after the social network’s developer platform launched last May (our coverage). Its applications let you play a music quiz game, put clips of your favorite songs on your profile page, and see when your favorite bands are playing near you. More recently, it has expanded to rival social networks with developer platforms, Bebo and Hi5 (our coverage). It also offers desktop plugins for iTunes and Windows Media Player (here), as well as its free-standing site and an iPhone application. Applications for Orkut and MySpace are slated to launch soon.

The dashboard is now used by more than 200,000 musicians, and around half of the top 500 musical acts in the country, including Radiohead, Jewel, Linkin Park, and others, the company claims. Its dashboard reaches 23 million users, total.

U2, for example, published an original song through the dashboard earlier this year, and gained 300,000 new fans — and 10,000 new fan comments — within a week.

R.E.M. has a slightly more complex plan in store for iLike. Essentially, it is streaming its album across iLike properties, but not letting users download it. The band start streaming the album on March 24, a week before the album itself goes on sale in North America. ILike is letting fans pre-order it on iTunes and Amazon’s music store. R.E.M. will also broadcast an exclusive video message about the album, that it will distribute via iLike.

Note: In case you’re wondering how Facebook’s own music efforts (our coverage) might compete with iLike, iLike’s chief executive Ali Partovi tells me that he’s not staying awake thinking about it. He points out the Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly went out of his way at the South by Southwest conference to mention iLike and how it’s doing a great job. Also, Facebook’s own fan page for R.E.M.has nearly 2,000 users, while iLike’s R.E.M. page has more than 300,000.

Another note: In case you’re wondering how iLike might work with MySpace, which itself got its start through being a social network for musicians and their fans, Partovi says that the relationship will be symbiotic. The company is experimenting with linking musician’s fan pages on other applications to their MySpace pages, as opposed to creating iLike fan pages within MySpace and linking to those. ILike will also release applications on MySpace, such as its music quiz application. But Partovi concedes that MySpace is a more competitive environment overall than the other social networks, with a range of third parties already running music-related applications, such as Imeem and its MySpace playlist widget.

So where’s the business angle in all of this? ILike is already among the top five traffic sources for iTunes. It is also one of the top five sources of ticket sales for concert ticket-selling service TicketMaster, one of iLike’s investors.

Meanwhile, widget company Gydget (previously event service Attendio; our coverage) has been working on its widget distribution service. The site lets anyone create a simple widget that they easily put their social networking information inside of. For example, for bands on MySpace, Gydget’s widget lets them enter their user ID or profile URL, then it imports their images, events, MySpace blog and YouTube videos. After a band creates the widget, it can easily update the widget with new information, such as tour dates.

(more…)

1. Facebook sees monthly dip in UK traffic, not a big deal
2. Abengoa Solar wins solar electricity plant contract with Arizona government
3. NAND flash memory chips getting cheaper
4. Facebook developer Blake Commagere has top Facebook games
5. ILike, the social networking music application, now has 22 million users
6. Windows Live SkyDrive offers up to 5GB free storage
7. Ta-da, the magical wireless mystery tour: SF bus begins testing internet service
8. “A truly great idea: 99 cent rotating movie rentals on iTunes”

Facebook sees monthly dip in UK traffic, not a big deal – Facebook had with 8.5 millions United Kingdom users in January, a drop of 400,000 monthly active UK users from December, a Nielson reports says. The Register crudely seizes on the news to suggest that the seasonal traffic dip is “very bad news for Facebook” — prompting a chorus of trollish comments (pictured). However, monthly fluctuations in social networking traffic are the norm. In fact, people were questioning the growth potential of Facebook back in 2006 — due to drooping February, 2006, comScore stats (our coverage). That was before the site more than doubled in size. Another likely explanation for slowing Facebook growth statistics in the UK — and the US — is simply that most potential Facebook users in these countries have already joined (which we’ve mentioned, here).

Abengoa Solar wins solar electricity plant contract with Arizona government — The publicly-traded Spanish company, which already has plants in Spain, Morocco and Algeria, will build, own and operate a 280MW solar plant located near sunny Gila Bend, Arizona. The client, the Arizona Public Service Co., will pay $4 billion over the next 30 years. Operations will begin in 2011. Meanwhile, most US solar projects are still generating power in the 5-10MW range. From Clean Edge:

The Solana Generating Station will have a total capacity of 280 megawatts, enough to power 70,000 homes while avoiding over 400,000 tons of greenhouse gases that would otherwise contribute to global warming and climate change. The plant will employ a proprietary Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) trough technology developed by Abengoa Solar, and will cover a surface of around 1,900 acres.

NAND flash memory chips getting cheaper — Consumers might buy fewer new phones and other devices that contain NAND flash chips to save money during a recession. Demand will drop and the market will get oversupplied. Chips will get cheaper, and annual revenue from chip manufacturers will climb from seven to nine percent, research firm iSuppli says, a sharp drop from its earlier projections of a 27 percent increase. PC World takes a look at the numbers.

Facebook developer Blake Commagere, has the most top games on Facebook  — So says this table crunched by Bret Terrill, of social game development company Tenuki, below. Here’s our interview with Commagere from last fall, about Open Social.

(Via Jeremy Liew)

ILike, the social networking music application, now has 22 million users — ILike offers a range of Facebook applications, an iTunes toolbar, and a free-standing web site for musicians and their friends. Its main Facebook application has grown from 4.5 million total users last July to 14 million today. The other chunk of half of its total 22 million users are coming from iLike.com and social networks besides Facebook. Techcrunch has more.

Windows Live SkyDrive offers up to 5GB free storage — That’s equal to AOL’s Xdrive. Details here.

Ta-da, the magical wireless mystery tour: SF bus begins testing internet service — All you’ll see on the outside of this hybrid electric bus is black and green paint, with a picture of Mother Earth and an electronic display featuring environmentally friendly messages. Here’s what you’ll find inside, according to the Chronicle:

A big, black steel cabinet behind the driver’s seat is stuffed with gadgetry that allows laptop-toting riders to connect to the Internet. The onboard electronics also provide the wall-mounted touch screens with information on the bus’ route and location, connecting routes and live information on arrival times. It also collects information about the bus and its operation that will help Muni maintain, schedule and run buses more efficiently.

The bus, part of the San Francisco MUNI mass transit system, will start on Monday and continue for the next year, running on the 10-Townsend line.

“A truly great idea: 99 cent rotating movie rentals on iTunes” — VentureBeat’s MG Siegler takes a look, on his personal blog, Parislemon.com.