LaLa.Com: The Sexiest Music on the Net

The music industry thought it was done for. CD sales divebombed, DRM lawsuits dogged the internet sales, pirates ripped and looted.

That SOS is a thing of the past. The music indrustry finally caught on; the internet opens doors. Hell it opens dams.

Sites like YouTube and hulu.com (fancast.com) jumped on the inernet bandwagon for free video streaming.Hulu users can watch episodes of any number of TV shows or movies for free.

Joss Whedon and co. took full advantage of the internet exposure wave and rode the free streaming debut of Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog to millions of viewers attempting to access the website at once, crashing the servers on www.drhorrible.com and at Hulu where it was also streamed.

DVD sales have since boomed for Dr. Horrible, ranking #1 on iTunes when it was first available and now #2 for DVDs on Amazon.com.

Entrepreneur Bill Nguyen is a famliar face in silicon valley. He created an e-mail provider Onebox and sold it for upwards of $800 million dollars. He easily moved on to creating the multi-million dollar e-mail firm Seven. He left Seven to spend time with his wife and his newly adopted baby in 2004. He was back soon enough.

What is it about those billionare Bills? Nguyen bought the tanking indie radio station WOXY in 2006. Soon after Nguyen brought his new creative baby to light. Lala.com emerged as a CraigsList for CD owners. The site fascilitated CD swapping, integrating user Want and Have lists and managable $1.75 fee (75 cents to cover postage, 20 cents to the artists, and a processing fee to the site).

Technically users are required under law to delete all mp3 copies of music they have before passing the CD on.It is easy to ignore this shadow law and keep digital copies of music before shipping it off. The site warned users to "Do the right thing" when it came to this potential pirating.

In 2007 the site offered CD sales. The WOXY acquiring allows lala's users access to WOXY's song library through streaming. If users like what they hear lala hedged on the hope that they will buy the CD from the site.

Lala.com is expanding its role in the internet music act. As of fall 2008 users can now listen to any of the 6 million songs on the website for free and all the way through. The catch: you can only listen once.

Lala.com works on the premise that users can not listen to a 30 second snippet (a la iTunes, Amazon.com) and sufficiently decide if they like the artist or song. The site hopes that users will find the model more conducive to finding new music. "Music doesn't sell itself," said Nguyen in an interview with Forbes Magazine.

Lala.com has deals with the four major music labels and is working on deals with indie labels to expand its catalog. These deals allow the site to offer newly released CDs on their sites. (They offered the new Keane album the day it was released to the public).

Users can buy a digital version of a song on the site for 10 cents. This version of a song lives on the internet and is accessible only from the user's account on lala.com. If users want to own the mp3 - downloadable to a harddrive like an ipod - they can buy it for 89 cents. If one has the digital 10 version the mp3 is only 79cents.

Users can also upload their home music libraries to lala.com with the site's application MusicMover. I'm not very good at understanding or describing the techincal aspects of how the site does this so if you are interested please refer to my reference links at the end of this article.
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Basically, MusicMover compares each of your library's songs to its site library. If the site has your song it will add it to your lala library (for free) and allow you to listen to it with as much abandon as you wish.

There is no cover charge to get a Lala.com account. There is no charge to listen to the streamed songs once.

I stumbled upon Susan Egan's Live CD on my first visit. I listened to the CD all the way through and the next day I bought it.

What makes Lala.com different?

It doesn't pepper users with ads. Unlike MySpace music, last.fm, IMEEM, and even Pandora there are no ads distracting users from the music.

Nguyen says that the site expects to make money from CD and song sales.

Ultimately, lala.com is about discovering new music. He hopes that his site can introduce people to new music and that they will be interested enough to buy it.

According to CNN.com Lala expects to break even if users buy 40 songs to every 1000 they stream. The site claims that users are currently buying 120 songs to the thousand streamed.

Perhaps you are an avid Pandora or Rhapsody fan. I'm not trying to convert you.

I'm just alerting you to another option.

Just try it out. Pass it on.

That's how these things work. Word of mouth and the willingness of internet users to try something new.

REFERENCES AND HELPFULL LINKS

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/1127/087.html

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081021-hands-on-lala-coms-cloud-music-store-changes-everything.html

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/15-11/ff_lala?currentPage=2

http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/20/technology/lala.fortune/index.htm