Lala relaunches with brave new format

October 21, 2008 12:35 p.m. by Andrew Winistorfer

Lala started as a CD-swapping service, and then quickly collapsed as a music hub. But now the site is relaunching with a new approach to web music: allowing people to purchase, for 10 cents, the right to stream any track in ther library as many times as you want. It’s perhaps the most logical way for record companies to make money off of streaming music.

Lala’s new service also allows you to listen to any track you want in their library all the way through once completely for free, and then the 10 cents purchase price comes in. But if you decide to buy the track, Lala is selling DRM free MP3’s for around 90 cents, minus the 10 cents if you paid to stream the track.

Lala has all four major labels on board, plus 175,000 independent artists for the service. Some bands’ music won’t be available for the service (the usual suspects of Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, and AC/DC) but this could change in the future of the service takes off. [Tech Crunch]

6 Responses

October 21, 2008 at 2:26 p.m.

Daba

The potential of this site is insane. Will be interesting to see if it takes off. I think it's an amazing idea.

October 21, 2008 at 2:34 p.m.

nick

I wonder if Muxtape could be revived if it worked under a similar model to this?

October 21, 2008 at 4:03 p.m.

Daba

I think it was reported Muxtape was close to a deal with the labels before talks stopped.

Has anyone tried Lala yet? I'm going to give it a shot tomorrow.

October 21, 2008 at 11:31 p.m.

EStan

Let's see the record industry try to find a way to argue against this.
Conversely, let's see how quickly it takes someone to find a way to crack the system and download without the extra charge.

October 22, 2008 at 12:40 a.m.

ChrisDeLine

I've used it and I really dig it. With the model that Google is setting by offering web apps and pretty much everything you'll need online rather than on your hard drive - I think this is a similar rational step in the realm of music. It's rare that I listen to music using something other than my computer these days, so at a dime a track - it doesn't seem like a bad way to go.

October 22, 2008 at 3:59 a.m.

Voyno

They're still trying to control too much.
The infrastructure to truly utilize this technology is still a few years ago. If ALL of our computers files, including documents, videos, and music, are stored on the net and we can access them by any format like from your mobile phone or any computer anywhere, then this makes sense. But people still want ownership.

Lala is a cool idea and it definitely makes people think about their music in a different way, but artists are STILL not being properly compensated for their work.

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