iLike -- The 'Lost' Response by George Ziemann -- October 21, 2008 Way back in December, 2006 Eliot Van Buskirk at Wired wrote an article about suddenly finding his music on iLike and trying to figure out how it got there. Finding Hayden's Wall had a page there as well, I added comments to the story. There was a response from iLike. Today was the first time I saw it. I had a traffic spike today and I was hoping someone was talking about Hayden's Wall, so I did a google search for the band name, No reviews or anything, but found the following, which I had never seen before and found extremely interesting. The original question was how the songs that we posted at the original mp3.com ended up at iLike. I believe my follow-up question was about the multi-million dollar payment to Trusonic for the rights to use our music. I had pursued this same question with Dave Marsh (Rock & Rap Confidential), he got interested and then came back and said, forget it, there's nothing there. Everything was fair and square, as far as such a thing could happen in the music biz. I don't think I was aware at the time that GarageBand and iLike was actually GarageBand/iLike (or iLike/GarageBand). And I knew I was on GarageBand, but it was the Trusonic rights that were being sold for millions. I was still following the trail of the mp3.com files from Michael Robertson to Universal to Trusonic to iLike and wondering how much profit Trusonic made selling the rights to our music. The response came from Ali Partovi, iLike/GarageBand's CEO. "The reason Eliot Van Buskirk's music appears on GarageBand.com is quite simple: because he posted it there (see more info below). "As CEO of iLike.com & GarageBand.com, I will also attempt to clarify two other confusing matters which this blog has brought up: first, 'GarageBand' is midway through renaming itself 'iLike' (we've launched iLike.com as a separate website but have not yet folded our original GarageBand.com services into it); and second, the whole subject of the former MP3.com catalog. "Before I start, I'd like to applaud the vigilance that both Mr. Van Buskirk and George Ziemann have shown (not just here but elsewhere over the years) in looking out for musicians' rights and exposing indiscretions by labels and other corporations.  Such vigilance is a healthy and constructive part of our industry's evolution. Corporations, like anybody else, can sometimes use a little extra help to find and fix their own mistakes. "That said, in this case I believe Mr. Ziemann and Mr. Van Buskirk are suffering from honest forgetfulness.  I spent a few minutes browsing online and found that both gentlemen actually registered accounts with GarageBand.com long before MP3.com shut down.  Their music 'ended up' on GarageBand.com not through any transfer from MP3.com, but because they posted it there themselves! "You can click for yourself to see: Mr. Van Buskirk's band account ('eighte8') http://www.garageband.com/artist/eighte8 his personal profile on GarageBand.com ('eliotvb3489') http://www.garageband.com/user/eliotvb3489 and even a review he wrote at GarageBand.com in Oct 1999 http://www.garageband.com/review?|pe1|SsjLPXjDivDybVK_amhzQcBsZUCSJQ "Likewise, here are: Mr. Ziemann's band ("Hayden's Wall") http://www.garageband.com/artist/HaydensWall his personal profile ("KeyZman") http://www.garageband.com/user/KeyZman and a music review he wrote in Sept 2002 http://www.garageband.com/review?|pe1|SsjLPXjDivDybVC3amBnDp02IF-HfZ1uDNI "Of course, it's possible that these profiles were created by fellow band members, band managers, or even by 'imposters' who stole their identities in order to post their music.  However, it's more likely that Mr. Ziemann and Mr. Van Buskirk both simply forgot that they created accounts at Garageband.com 4-6 years ago.  To 'reclaim' their music today, all they need to do is click on GarageBand's 'forgot password' link to get all the info they need to log in.  There they can update their band profiles, delete the songs, change the permissions to 'streaming only,' etc." I need to interrupt here to say that Mr. Partovi is absolutely correct about all of this, except for the assumption that I forgot about making a GarageBand account. And I am the one that did it. Not fellow band members or imposters. The real clarity comes a bit further on. "Now, I'll attempt to clear up two other confusing matters: first the fact that my company owns and operates two websites (iLike.com and GarageBand.com), and second our past relationship with Trusonic (a spin-out from Michael Robertson's MP3.com). "While GarageBand.com has been in operation since 1999, we recently launched a new service, iLike.com. Within a matter of weeks iLike.com has already exceeded GarageBand.com in traffic, and we've decided to rename the company iLike because it's a stronger and broader name. iLike helps you discover music through your friends and through personal recommendations.  iLike.com gets music info from three different sources: (1) users who install the iLike Sidebar for iTunes allow our software to analyze their music libraries and construct an organic discography of the music universe from the songs on their computers; (2) musicians can post music on GarageBand.com to be tagged and rated by the community (the highest-rated music finds its way into the iLike recommendations) (3) we license 30-sec samples for major-label music from Muze. "As a result, iLike has profiles for Madonna and U2 even though those artists have not registered accounts with us -- because lots of people using the iLike Sidebar have Madonna and U2 music in their iTunes libraries.  Meanwhile, iLike also has profiles for unsigned artists like Mr. Van Buskirk's band 'eighte8' who *have* registered accounts with us via GarageBand.com.  And there are overlap cases (such as Anne Heaton, one of my personal favorites) who posted a few of her songs on GarageBand.com, while other songs of hers have appeared on iLike via Muze. (Keeping these separate music sources straight is a technical challenge that still has some glitches -- for example, while 'eighte8' and 'Hayden's Wall' both have profiles on iLike, the iLike profile for Hayden's Wall has not (yet) been propagated with the band's music.  We are working on cleaning up these glitches and better integrating artist services directly into iLike.) "Now, to clear up the confusion about Trusonic and MP3.com. When the former MP3.com (started by Michael Robertson and later acquired by Vivendi-Universal) was shut down in Dec 2003, some of its assets were spun out in the form of a small company called Trusonic. These assets included a subset of the MP3.com artist profiles and music catalog. Trusonic never 'sold' these assets to us. However, Trusonic recognized that the musicians who were left 'homeless' by MP3.com's shutdown might want a new place to host their music, so they worked with us to create an interface where musicians could log-in to 'recover' their former MP3.com accounts and easily migrate their music and other data to GarageBand.com. Out of respect for privacy and copyrights, Trusonic kept all the files on their own servers and gave us no access to the data. The *only* songs/profiles that 'transitioned' to GarageBand.com were those where the artist logged in to Trusonic and gave permission for Trusonic to transfer the info. " For a lot more info, see our: FAQ about the transfer of music from MP3.com to GarageBand.com http://www.garageband.com/mp3transfer/faq.html The now-defunct interface for musicians to 'recover' their MP3.com accounts http://www.garageband.com/mp3transfer and the official press release about it http://www.garageband.com/htdb/companyinfo/pr042004.html "Phew, if you made it this far, thanks for reading!  In short, while we're all human and capable of honest mistakes, to my knowledge there has not been a breach of any artist's rights in the matters described here.  I would hope that Mr. Van Buskirk will consider updating his post (or making a new one) to remove the implications that his music was 'transitioned' to GarageBand or that 'something truly fishy has gone on' -- these implications only serve to confuse an already complex subject. Happy new year and have a wonderful 2007, Ali Partovi CEO, iLike.com & Garageband.com There's a missing piece in Mr. Partovi's account of what happened. A very small piece, but important nonetheless. "The *only* songs/profiles that 'transitioned' to GarageBand.com were those where the artist logged in to Trusonic and gave permission for Trusonic to transfer the info. " This is not quite true. There was a point in there that Trusonic offered an opportunity to opt out of iLike, which I did. If your email address had changed since you were at mp3.com, you did not get the e-mailing telling you about this. The songs/profiles that "transtioned" to GarageBand were those where the artist did not log in to Trusonic, or logged in and decided to let it go. The artists that never got the e-mail didn't authorize jack and their tunes transitioned anyway. At the time, there was no real indication this had anything to do with GarageBand. iLike was a new company getting its tunes from Trusonic, I opted out and they still put up a Hayden's Wall page. Of course, this is pretty much irrelevant now. However, it did shine a little light and answered some old, nagging questions. Wish I had seen it in January, 2007, but thought I'd share it for any other artists who used to be at mp3.com, missed this like I did, and still wondered about how all that had transpired.