Idolator
The CD-swap site lala.com started a program today in which users are allowed to stream music from the Warner Music Group and a sizeable number of indie labels for free, in the hopes that they'll eventually pony up for the privilege of toting the songs around on their iPods and other portable-media players:
It's like a subscription music service, but without the monthly subscription fee. Lala is betting that in return for getting all that free access to music at home, listeners will pay to buy the songs they want to take with them on iPods and other music players. The prices will range from $6.50 to $13.50 for an album. (For now, Lala plans to sell music only by the album rather than song by song.)
Lala, whose owners include Bain Capital LLC and several veteran Silicon Valley investors, is underwriting the free offering by paying major labels $6 to $8 a user each month, about the same wholesale rate paid by online music-subscription services like RealNetworks Inc.'s Rhapsody. But where Rhapsody and its competitors charge users $12 a month for "all you can eat streaming," Lala.com will charge nothing. And where Rhapsody and its competitors require users to load special — and occasionally glitchy — programs to access their offerings, Lala will work through a normal Web browser. Users of Lala's Web-based service can create and save playlists, send them to friends and browse the virtual collections of other users — all for free.
More important still, the new service will work with Apple Inc.'s iPods — something no iTunes competitor featuring major-label content has been able to do.
This is a pretty shrewd move for lala, which has made its "music-discovery service" rhetoric believable by, among other things, investing in the streaming-radio stalwart WOXY, and the fact that these files will be iPod compatibile makes us wonder if this scheme could actually work—even though only albums will be available. But as the piece notes, other try-before-you-buy services have traditionally been compatible only with Windows Media-compatible players, whether they used the PlaysForSure DRM or the file locks offered by the Zune Marketplace; none of those players, though, have the marketshare that iPods do, which immediately widens the potential revenue stream. Sure, it probably won't save album sales singlehandedly—particularly since the CD-swapping side of lala is still open—but the ability to sample full albums, as opposed to 30-second song snippets or press photos, will likely give the available titles at least a bit of a bump.
Comments
As a long time La La member (i.e., physical CD trader), I'm eagerly awaiting a bunch of new La La members that this media attention will garner (so I can trade more CDs, obviously ;-). Come on in, the water's fine. Seriously, if you have a crap-load of old CDs that you no longer listen to, and you would prefer to pay $1.75 for a used CD of new-to-you music, La La is the place to be.
I'm so-so on the new features that La La is promoting, since I already take my music with me my way and won't benefit from anywhere access. I'm keeping an open mind though. Maybe I will use some of the new stuff. At the very least, the media attention is appreciated.
Ah, another CD request just came in. Somebody actually WANTS "More Than You Think You Are" by Matchbox Twenty. Hell, yeah!
As a long-time member of Lala, I have to say that the Lala 2.0 upgrade that they are putting in place is pretty kickass. In addition to the stuff you guys mentioned, they also are including a built in program that you can download which enables you to listen to your music online from any computer. I know that other programs do this, and possibly do it better, but the fact that all the neat crap is bundled together and is extremely user-friendly is awesome.
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