MySpace has announced the acquisition of online music service iLike.

Popular social networking site MySpace has announced an agreement to acquire leading social music discovery service, iLike.

iLike is the largest music application service across all online social networks with a total of 55 million users.

Owen Van Natta, CEO of MySpace, said of the agreement announced yesterday (19 August): “The iLike acquisition advances our relentless pursuit of innovation and the need to create new distributed social experiences in music and beyond.”

Hadi Partovi, President of iLike, added: “Combining MySpace’s existing platform, reach and resources with iLike’s syndication network and social discovery tools creates the potential for truly exciting innovation.”

iLike stated that all users and the artist community would be unaffected by the acquisition and the entire team would remain intact.

The financial details of the acquisition were not released but according to CNET, some reports claim that MySpace could have paid up in the region of $20 million (£12m).

The acquisition has surprised some internet analysts as many had expected iLike to form a deal with Facebook. It is estimated that up to 80% of iLike traffic is generated through Facebook.

Caroline McCarthy, Staff Writer at CNET, said: “It’s unclear as to how the deal will affect iLike’s relationship with Facebook.

“The social network’s developer platform has been home to much of iLike’s activity, and now that it will be owned by Facebook’s closest rival, there’s a chance that Facebook could restrict or block the app.”