No ads. No subscriptions. Totally legal.

-DRM-free mp3 downloads are 79-99cents
-Web songs are 10 cents each, with the cost deducted from the song price if you choose to download them in the future.
-Streaming music player to play your web songs
-Upload your own mp3s to your web collection to play from the streaming player for free, music mover has a 70% identification rate to identify your collection and adds them to your web collection automatically
-6 million songs
-50 free web song purchases upon signup
-1 free full-length play of each song in the entire catalog (subsequent listens are 30-sec)
-share your collection with others via embed player, rss feeds, allowing you to see other peoples music interest

etc. etc.

i've been using it all day and love it

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2008/10/la_la_plays_a_n.html
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gUq9Vqsgrw3FQW51FYwGe_L6ur-gD93UKQ880
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081021-hands-on-lala-coms-cloud-music-store-changes-everything.html


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[Edited on October 21, 2008 at 4:50 PM. Reason : .]

10/21/2008 4:42:43 PM

i saw the ars review in my feeds today. i don't get it. with pandora and last.fm, i pretty much listen to whatever i enjoy (including my own library) all day long at no cost

10/21/2008 4:53:56 PM

i believe this is supposed to be more competitive with itunes rather than something like pandora or last.fm

[Edited on October 21, 2008 at 4:55 PM. Reason : ]

10/21/2008 4:55:42 PM

it's ad-free, and not subject to the "internet radio" licensing debacle and it's main purpose is an online music store, the web collection is just an added bonus at minimal cost and no ads

[Edited on October 21, 2008 at 4:59 PM. Reason : .]

10/21/2008 4:58:13 PM

when they come out with an iphone client, i'll use it

10/21/2008 5:29:07 PM

^it'll happen.

10/21/2008 5:29:32 PM

^^i wont. Pandora sucks balls on the iPhone now. It eats battery life and there's no background program support.

10/21/2008 7:16:10 PM

pandora eats battery life because it's constantly using your 3g data/wifi connection to stream music... that's to be expected.

background support is working fine with my jailbroken iphone.

i'm never in a place where i don't have a charger every 3-4 hours... so it's fine for me, and i'd expect it's fine for most people. i listen to pandora around campus, driving in my car, etc...

10/21/2008 7:18:24 PM

what do you all use (legally) for DRM free music? do you pay the $1.25 in iTunes?

show me another site in which you can get 320 kbps CBR, DRM-free mp3's for less than $1.00 with the same features as lala.com

if you pirate your music do not reply. we all know how.

10/21/2008 8:21:14 PM

^I listen to Pandora and now last.fm again (thanks in large part to qntmfred) for about 45% of my music.

Another 30-35% I get listen to from my roomate who just buys CD's.

The rest I listen to on myspace, the radio, or recommendations from friends on the interwebs.

The only music I've "downloaded" in the last year have been free releases by Radiohead and NiN, and a few of the $2.99 DRM Free MP3 downloads from Amazon.com

^^I have one charger that came with the phone. I refuse to spend half the cost of the phone to buy a charger for every damn place I go. With Pandora on, the phone is dead in 5 hours or less, which is absolutely sad. I don't blame pandora for that, but it makes it pretty worthless for me as a (truly) mobile user.

10/21/2008 8:30:21 PM

well it's for people who buy music, so if all you do is listen to online radio, or the FM radio, i can understand the lack of interest

i've listened to pandora for a long long time, but now i can stream my own music without ads for free, so that's a bonus. in fact i'm now actually motivated more-so now to purchase music, even if it's just the web version to be able to stream it whenever i want

[Edited on October 21, 2008 at 9:04 PM. Reason : .]

10/21/2008 8:50:24 PM

I guess my point is, because of last and pandora, it's pretty much curbed my need to own mp3's. Which, for me at least, is a godsend (surely you remember by packratish ways back in the dorm days).

Lala sounds like a really good concept, but like all similar services I worry about the longevity of my purchase (for the web tracks) when the company goes bust or changes directions in a few years. Many of the MP3's I have are 8-10 years old, longer than any music service has been around, and longer than many services have even survived.

I really liked Rhapsody, but it was too device limited. I hate iTunes with a passion. Maybe this will get me back into buying one-off tracks again, but frankly I've mostly gone back to regular CD's.

10/21/2008 10:45:13 PM

I love pandora and I'm feeling lala.com. thanks for the heads up

10/21/2008 11:13:18 PM

I use Amazon MP3

10/21/2008 11:29:44 PM

^^^they are DRM-free, so no need to worry about losing the license servers if/when the servers go down

also the web streaming purchase is 10 cents because you are buying the license to stream it, not to own it, so if/when the server goes down you just pay the amount to own it and download it and any music you upload from your own collection already is free, so you're not losing anything

i still think pandora/last.fm are more risky considering the internet radio licensing scheme versus the lala.com one.

CD's FTW

[Edited on October 22, 2008 at 12:16 AM. Reason : .]

10/21/2008 11:49:14 PM

Huge fan. It's about time my music purchases are available anywhere/anytime.

Really hope they keep this going, it's good for everyone involved. For us, because we get access to our music that we buy; and them because we can stop being so riotous toward them for their draconian DRM techniques and separate device formats that don't allow us to use our music however we please.

Huge fan.

[Edited on October 22, 2008 at 12:36 AM. Reason : .]

10/22/2008 12:34:14 AM

http://www.lala.com/#artist/Grains_of_Time

lmao

I DID NOT AUTHORIZE THIS... i guess since i license it to musicnet they picked it up that way.

10/22/2008 12:41:03 AM

Will be great when the battery in my Zune dies or I've left my it at home.

I still use Amazon for the vast majority of my music purchases these days... probably 3 albums a week (damn daily deal and Friday 5 is nickel and diming my wallet to death)

10/22/2008 1:12:35 AM

what is a "web song"?

10/22/2008 2:12:11 AM

Why do I feel that this is going to get shutdown.

10/22/2008 4:21:09 AM

^no idea, it's purely a music store with full label backing...

it has nothing to do with internet radio licensing like others.

10/22/2008 2:26:44 PM

shutdown as in bankrupt or unsustainable business model? or shutdown as in lawsuits from record labels. i can see the first one, but like has been mentioned, it has the backing of the labels. they've pulled some retarded stuff in the last several years, but even i don't think they would sue lala out of business

10/22/2008 3:12:44 PM

i think they said as long as they get 15-20 mp3 purchases for every 1,000 listens on the streaming player they'll be profitable. in testing they said they were getting on average about 60 per 1,000, they also have $30+ million in backing

so as long as people just don't ONLY upload their own music and use it ONLY for it's streaming, and people actually use it to buy their music, then i imagine they'll do well.

^^^^a web song is a 10 cent purchase of a license to be able to stream that song, so they give you access to play the song via the streaming player, but do not allow you to download it.

[Edited on October 22, 2008 at 4:46 PM. Reason : .]

10/22/2008 4:44:48 PM

Quote :

"It eats battery life and there's no background program support."

if yours is jailbroken then use "enabler" to take care of background support for anything

you probably already knew that, for those that don't..there ya go

10/22/2008 6:01:05 PM

yeah, im not going to jailbreak my iPhone, not an option.

10/22/2008 6:18:28 PM

why is that not an option

it's completely reversable

10/22/2008 6:21:26 PM

yeah there's really no reason not to do it..i wish i had jailbroken mine a lot sooner

10/22/2008 6:26:09 PM

this music mover thing is pretty sweet

except it takes forever it's been running for an hour, says it's going to take 2 more hours

i guess i can't fault it, i have a lot of music, haha

10/22/2008 8:55:46 PM

Yup just wait until it gets to the ones it couldn't find on the service, it'll upload them ... find a fast upload connection, or wait for a day.

10/22/2008 9:00:22 PM

it's nice that it just sits in the system tray unobtrusively though

10/22/2008 9:02:14 PM

A Linux version would be nice

10/22/2008 9:06:04 PM

i agree - although i was happy to see an OS X version... that was awesome.

10/22/2008 9:07:24 PM

who has some good playlists?

10/25/2008 4:29:53 PM

Quote :

"A Linux version would be nice"

I just noticed the flash uploader. Too bad it has about a 10% success rate.

10/27/2008 1:40:00 PM

i had about 57% success rate out of 2500 songs, gs7 i think had 70% success rate out of 3500 songs.

i just tried the manual uploader an hour ago and it had 100% success rate. i think having it tagged properly is part of it.

^^not related to lala, but i thought these free tracks were pretty good, at least some of 'em:
http://reigoplaylist.com/

[Edited on October 27, 2008 at 5:08 PM. Reason : .]

10/27/2008 5:04:50 PM

I wasn't having problems with songs being improperly tagged, it just crashed my browser nine times out of ten.

10/28/2008 2:04:37 PM

bump

12/5/2009 12:31:57 AM

so i guess Apple is buying lala now

12/5/2009 12:46:02 AM

Seriously? I use it all the time and still have a couple songs left from my free 50 last year.

It's better than what most people do for single serving songs (youtube).

12/5/2009 1:03:15 AM

lolwut

when did that get announced?

lala had JUST submitted their app to apple like a month ago

12/5/2009 1:25:01 AM

can any of you guys help me find an article that states which bank coordinated the Apple/Lala deal

12/5/2009 1:28:37 AM

http://www.slacker.com/

seems like the apple purchase can't be a good thing for lala fans...

12/5/2009 11:21:28 AM

unless Apple is FINALLY going to create a subscription based model.

12/5/2009 12:08:26 PM

Lol, I was messing around with lala's music mover last night just to see if any of my library would just auto unlock a few songs. Forgot about it and apparently it uploaded about 2000 songs. So now I definitely want this service to remain free.

12/5/2009 3:56:29 PM

things known for sure:
a) prices will go up (apple tax), or at least we know the contracts will likely be renegotiated
b) we most likely won't be able to stream our own music for free anymore.

sad day for lala.com users indeed.

12/6/2009 12:27:34 AM

the so-called "apple tax" is applied to hardware and computers, not services and downloads.

12/6/2009 12:00:57 PM

^^ you don't know any of those will happen. pure speculation. that said, the only reason why people will choose to freak out about this is because it might get tied to the iTunes store, which apparently is The Devil.

12/6/2009 12:13:16 PM

I've been using this for a while. I love it. My only two complaints:

I can't play the music from my iPhone/iPod while I'm at work. This can be fixed if Apple approves their app, which was submitted to the iTunes App store last spring, but hasn't been approved yet (probably because they compete directly with iTunes). I have a feeling it will be once Droid users get the app. Yay for good ol' fashioned American competition.

I can't play the music through my PS3 with DLNA, so I can't play my web tracks through my stereo downstairs without plugging in a laptop or media pc.

http://www.lala.com/#member/24920@30022 (philihp)

12/6/2009 4:47:01 PM

Quote :

"the so-called "apple tax" is applied to hardware and computers, not services and downloads."

prices will go up due to the buyout from Apple. tell me how that's not paying more than i would have if it stayed lala.com.

12/6/2009 5:02:17 PM

1) you're speculating, as Optimum pointed out
2) you're "moving the goalposts" as to what the previously held definitions of the "apple tax" was. Will prices go up? I dunno, maybe. If they do, that's hardly "the apple tax", though.

12/6/2009 5:07:18 PM