MySpace makes music moves: buys iLike, kills autoplay
iLike will remain a separate service, but its new music store and its huge userbase on MySpace's biggest rival site, Facebook, could add up to a big win for MySpace. It shouldn't take all that long to make back the rumored $20 million MySpace spent on the acquisition. MySpace also thinks iLike could be expanded beyond music, into video and games. iLike's recommendation features could also be monetized somehow in the future.
Stopping autoplay might not seem like a business decision at first, but it really was. MySpace's streaming costs had grown to $10 million a month, and a significant portion of that came from songs that automatically started playing on user profiles. Getting rid of this feature has other advantages, too. The obvious one is a less annoying user experience, and the slightly less obvious is better data collection. Even if you hate your friends' profile songs, they still count as plays when they start automatically. For those who really love autoplay, there's now a preference to opt into it.
