Road to FlashFWD: Likeit.fm

I had a chance to chat with manager/entrepreneur Daniel Weisman about his developing startup Likeit.fm.  Essentially, it’s a platform for artists to use unique artist pages and Facebook tabs to engage fans with a clear call to action for them to submit radio requests.  Nothing sounds more authentic to a station than 1000’s of fans requesting same song through Twitter.  Examples here, here, and here.

1.  Do you think you would have conceived of Likeit.fm had you not been a manager?  Why or why not?

I don’t think I would’ve.  Back in January/February 2010, [Mike] Posner and I hired an independent radio promoter to get Mike’s record “Cooler Than Me” started.  I wanted a way to funnel Mike’s online fanbase into meaninful calls to actions and we had been using Twitter to shout @ DJ’s and stations that spiked the record, etc.  I thought it’d be great to centralize all of radio’s Twitter and Facebook data so that fans could go to one site and do something meaningful for Mike’s record.  I also included phone, text and email request info too but felt that facebook and twitter were most important because it creates public chatter.  So I had my web guy build a basic widget that auto generated tweets @ the station saying something like “yo @1027kiisfm, I wanna hear @mikeposner “Cooler Than Me”.

Basically we were just an artist and manager that hadn’t gotten RCA on board with the record yet so we had to make use of whatever resources we had.  Likeit.fm was born out of necessity.  It worked too…a  year later Mike has had three massive hits, has toured the globe and just won an ASCAP Awards for “Cooler Than Me”

2.  I foresee you monetizing the site through ads and/or affiliate sales of merch, downloads, and tickets.  Am I missing anything else?  If I’m completely wrong, how do you plan on making this a moneymaking venture?

Honestly, I think this is a great idea and I think it’s going to take a minute for it to become a viable currency for artists because funny enough, things move slow in the music business.  I am proud of the development we’ve done, our backend is incredibly robust and our facebook tab is live on Mike Posner, Willow Smith and The New Boyz facebook pages.  I’m hoping we can compete with RootMusic.

Interested?  Check out Likeit.fm and if see you or the artist you represent might gain from creating a page and feel free to check out my RootMusic interview, so you can see why Weisman is aiming for them.