Ali Partovi says iLike is all about growth

CEO of social music platform on Facebook, MySpace and what makes a good app

iLike, the most popular music application on several of the largest social networks, has launched some new features that make it easy for app developers to add playlists to any Web site or Web application.

Thanks to a long and varied list of launch partners including Google, Evite and Flixster, the features will let Web users add songs and build soundtracks for everything from party invites to movie pages to blog pages.

It's all part of iLike's continued effort to position itself among the largest music platforms on the Web by letting users see what bands or concerts are most popular among their friends.

Back in July, when we tracked down CEO Ali Partovi for the video interview above, iLike had just rolled out new advertising tools that let anyone automatically create ads that can include photos and streamable music. Because the ads can track the the musical tastes of iLike users, they can be highly targeted.

When we spoke, iLike had 30 mln users, half on Facebook and half on other sites, including its own Web site. Facebook had selected iLike as one of its first two "Great Apps," which acknowledged iLike as the de facto social music app on Facebook, which lets users have full-song playback.

He says the key to making a good application is that it be fast, clean and easy to use. It's also helped that iLike defined itself "from Day One as a social music feature".

iLike is consistently among the top drivers of music sales to iTunes platform and in July had just passed AOL as the biggest driver of sales to TicketMaster.

"At the end of the day, it's the consumer that will decide," who wins in the market, he Partovi says.

Partovi told me that being cash flow positive isn't an immediate goal for the company, and that it's using it's plowing its revenue back into the business to increase the user base. 

"I have a ton of respect for MySpace... we aspired to become as impactful on the human experience," Partovi says, "but we've not viewed it as rich an opportunity, because... we can't be as much help there."