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Adding credence to a week's worth of rumors and hearsay, social network MySpace has purchased iLike, a music application that lets users recommend songs and share playlists on their social networks of choice.

iLike is among a handful of brands that managed to build a viable business atop open platforms proffered by traffic-rich sites like Facebook. In July the site served 2.9 million unique visitors in the US, 59.25% of which came from Facebook and only 3.17% of which came from MySpace, according to Compete. With over 26 million registered users, it positions itself as the leading social music discovery service and the top music app on Facebook, Orkut, hi5 and Bebo.

"iLike is an important part of a lot of different social networking experiences, and we're excited to extend that experience to other areas of entertainment that MySpace has assets in," said CEO Owen Van Natta in a call with reporters (via The New York Times). He added that while the company will explore "ways which we can leverage [iLike] talent more broadly [across its MySpace]," iLike will continue to operate autonomously.

Van Natta positioned the buy as part of a strategy to restructure and refocus MySpace, whose roots lie in promoting independent bands and which has lost significant social networking ground to rival Facebook over the past year.

In June MySpace announced plans to cut 30% of its US team, a total of 420 employees. Less than two weeks later, it also prepared to cut 2/3 of its international staff.

Financial terms of the deal were not discussed, but speculation pegs the purchase price at $20 million. CEO Ali Partovi and President Hadi Partovi will also remain.

MySpace launched a heavily-sponsored streaming music and video service, MySpace Music, in late 2008. Traffic to the subsite increased 1017% by July 2009.

News of the acquisition arrived amidst talk that iLike plans to introduce its own music store.