Lala’s Spectacular New Music Service
By Harry McCracken | Monday, October 20, 2008 at 8:12 pm
For a couple of months now, I’ve been using a music service that’s been in a quiet (but open) beta period. It’s been kind of amazing. That service is the all-new version of Lala, and it’s officially throwing its doors open to the public today.
Among other things, Lala is:
–a service that sells MP3s (DRM-free, natch) for 89 cents apiece and streaming-only versions of songs (“Web songs”) for a dime (which can be applied later to the purchase of an MP3). Entire streaming “Web albums” are typically eighty cents. And most downloadable MP3 albums are aggressively priced–ones that go for $9.99 on iTunes are typically $7.49 on Lala, less than even the price-slashing Amazon.com download store charges. (Any download you buy includes a streaming version at no extra cost.)
–a service that will let you listen to scads of new music without paying even that one thin dime per streaming track, since you can stream any song that Lala has–and it has millions, from the four major labels and 170,000 independents–for free the first time you listen. (New members also get their first fifty Web songs for free, period.)
–a service which scans the music on your computer’s hard drive, identifies the songs, and puts them into your online library at Lala for free, so you can listen to them in any browser on any computer. Yes, this is a modern version of My.MP3.com, the nifty service that was killed by the music industry back in 2000. But this time around, Lala is paying the music companies so it’s all kosher. (I’ve wanted MyMP3 back since the day it went away, so I got kind of emotional when I saw that Lala had essentially replicated it for the moden era of digital music.)
–a social network that lets you discover new music by seeing what other folks are listening to, then listening yourself–again, for free if you’ve never heard a track before, and for a dime if you’ve listened once and haven’t already bought the Web version.
–an iPhone application that lets you stream your entire music to your phone; as long as you’ve got an Internet connection, the effect is a little like having an iPod with infinite capacity. (The iPhone app isn’t available yet, but I saw a preview and liked it; the company says it’ll arrive soon.)
What’s impressive about Lala isn’t just the number of things it does, but how well it does them. I’ve been using it for a while, and it works exceptionally well. The browser-based interface for listening to your music mimics iTunes, and it’s easy to forget it’s Web-based: music starts with little or no delay, and keeps playing even if you browse around Lala or bop over to another browser tab or window.
Integration between Lala’s various features is nicely done–for instance, if you’re browsing albums for sale, Lala knows which songs you already have and doesn’t try to sell them to you again. Which makes it easy to complete albums which you own in partial form. (In the screen below, I already own “Break on Through” and “Alabama Song,” so they don’t have Add links.)
The service’s Music Mover application, which puts songs you already own into your Lala collection, is available in both Windows and Mac versions and performed like a champ in my tests. Of about 16,000 audio tracks on my laptop, it identified roughly half and instantly unlocked them in my Lala collection. The other half–which consisted largely of oddball stuff like a 78-rpm Mickey Mouse Club album that a friend transferred and entire seasons of 1930s radio shows–it had to upload track by track; that took a loooong time. But when it was done, I had all my music and other audio stuff in a form I can listen to on any computer that has a browser–even the songs I’d bought from iTunes that are protected with Apple’s FairPlay DRM.
Lala has been around for around two and a half years, and it’s kind of hopscotched from one music-related business model to another. It began as a service for swapping CDs by mail. Then it bought Woxy.com, a popular online radio station in Cincinnati. Then it tried free music streaming. So my instinct is to be cautious about the company’s attention span. But this latest incarnation of the service is downright amazing–I can’t imagine anyone who loves music not going gaga for it. A decade into the digital music revolution, its Music Mover and slick interface make it among the very coolest things I’ve ever seen.
The company’s cofounder, Bill Nguyen, tells me that the company can make a comfortable profit selling songs for a dime apiece in streaming form and for less than most of the competition as MP3 downloads; he also says that the company has the deals in place to offer nearly all the music folks will want to listen to in both Web and MP3 form. (I haven’t done a methodical analysis of what it has and doesn’t have, but I found seven out of the top ten albums in the Billboard 200 in Web form, and eight out of ten as downloads; most, but not all, of the music I’ve tried to listen to has been available.)
Lala’s business strategy, Nguyen says, is to making finding and listening to music so incredibly easy that buying it is irresistible. We’ll see how it turns out–like I say, it’s also possible to get a heck of a lot out of Lala without ever buying anything. I’m rooting for the company–the new Lala is just plain terrific, and I’d like to see it stick around for a long time to come.
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October 21st, 2008 at 4:46 am[…] I have a zillion songs on my studio’s Apple Mac Pro. When I am at home or on the road I can’t listen to those songs. In the past there were services such as My.MP3.com that would let you put all your music in the cloud. However, they never went through the hoola hoops to get past the RIAA and were shut down. Today as I woke up every tech site I read was talking about Lala. Lala, with the blessing from the RIAA lets users have their entire music catalog in cloud. They are also a social network, music store, an iPhone app (yes you can listen to your catalog anywhere), and lastly a free music streaming service ala Last.fm. “What’s impressive about Lala isn’t just the number of things it does, but how well it does them. I’ve been using it for a while, and it works exceptionally well. The browser-based interface for listening to your music mimics iTunes, and it’s easy to forget it’s Web-based: music starts with little or no delay, and keeps playing even if you browse around Lala or bop over to another browser tab or window.” – technologizer.com […]
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October 20th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Yet another DRM-free music store that only works in the US.
October 21st, 2008 at 6:01 am
Simply amazing. I remember Lala back when it was the CD trading service, but this blows that out of the water.
Thanks for covering it. You’ve done it once again.
October 21st, 2008 at 6:19 am
Sounds like LALA might’ve found the business model everyone will be happy with. The pay to stream after 50 free might be a challenge but it’s a great idea still. It’s interesting to see this format when Apple has resisted the subscription model and Amazon stopped the DRM. Let’s see if any other record companies comply. As a matter of fact, I wonder if we could apply this formula to movies too,hmmm.
October 21st, 2008 at 9:42 am
I honestly home that this service takes off. The idea of only paying 10¢ to stream any song I hear is pleasant. I prefer this a la carte approch much better than a subscription fee for songs I may or may not listen to. I do have some doubts about the sustainability of this model, especially since people can upload extensive collections and not pay 1 cent on any of those songs. I’m sure they’ve thought of this and have a plan. Here’s hoping for the best
October 21st, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Ah, what a perfect way to be able to listen to my whole music collection from my Eee PC! With only 4 GB of storage capacity, you can’t take much music with you. Now all I need is a wifi connection, and I’m set!
I already downloaded and ran the Lala Music Mover on my Windows PC, to move my collection to the Lala database. Now I can log onto Lala from my Linux-based Eee sublaptop, and listen to my whole collection. VERY cool!
October 21st, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Looks amazing…I just wish Amazon MP3 would have a better download application.
January 4th, 2009 at 2:23 am
We’re trying it for the first time, along with our label Neverever. Skeptical at first, I do now definitely agree with Harry and most of these comments previous posted. It is pretty nice considering it is basically Flash-based. The best part of Lala so far, for us (because we’ve only been on a month, no money in as of this post GMT-8) is the framed music player which sounds like it plays good sounding 256k mp3 (not sure of the encoding type but it really does sound good — you’ll be disgusted at amazonMP3’s sample (although their encoding sounds great at 256k VBR / L.A.M.E.)). Anyway, as artists we say yes to easy-play, convenience and portability. That’s what we want for our own music collections. It’s pretty simple… Now let’s see if Lala starts paying out for us 🙂
August 3rd, 2009 at 10:59 am
cool, i think my music is on lala
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May 31st, 2011 at 6:02 pm
Simply amazing. I remember Lala back when it was the CD trading service, but this blows that out of the water. Another great post!
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