Call me a skeptic. When Lala came to our offices last week trying to convince me that music was heading to the cloud, and that they were going to help lead the transition, I wasn’t convinced at first. The company has floundered for years, moving from a CD swapping service to a failed music hub that shut down last summer. But now they’ve completely redesigned and are coming back with an advertising-free music site that makes me think that they might be onto something big here.
At first glance, Lala resembles most other music stores. You use a search box to find your favorite artists, and can buy DRM-free music for around 90 cents (there is some slight variation depending on the song). Each page features an artist profile, their albums, and playlists that other users have included them on. It’s standard fare, and while the DRM-free music is nice, it would have a tough time competing with Amazon on its own.
Fortunately Lala’s real potential stems from its integrated media player and your web library (which looks a lot like iTunes, but in the cloud). At the top of the screen is a music player that will continue playing whatever song you listen to, no matter where you navigate on the site. And you’ll have lots of content to play: users will be able to play any song on the site’s massive catalog in its entirety exactly one time free of charge. The limitation sounds restrictive at first, but it costs only 10 cents to buy a “web song” - giving you the ability to stream that song as many times as you’d like in the future. And if you decide to buy the normal MP3 later, that 10 cents will go towards your purchase.
This 10 cent price point is incredibly addictive, and is essential to Lala’s monetization strategy (users are given 50 free web songs to get them used to the idea). CEO Geoff Ralston explains that other sites like imeem or MySpace Music need to inundate users with advertising in order to make money - something that isn’t conducive to a good music listening experience. Conversely, Lala wants you to listen to as much music as possible in the hopes that you’ll keep clicking that addictive 10 cent “web song” button, and is forgoing advertising entirely. The result is very refreshing.
Lala has also done some serious legal wrangling to help you populate your online library. Using the site’s helper application (available on Windows and Mac), Lala can scan your iTunes music library and add every song you already own to your Lala web library, essentially giving you online streaming access to any song you already have on your computer. And best of all: Lala will give you free, unlimited streaming access to every song in your library, even the ones you’ve acquired in ways that weren’t quite legal. Ralston says that the record labels resisted this at first (”why should we give them access to something they stole”), but eventually came to the conclusion that users weren’t going to buy something they’d already downloaded.
Lala has signed all four major labels and 175,000 independent artists to its extensive library. There are still occasional songs that aren’t totally licensed (you can’t buy the 10 cent versions of any Led Zeppelin songs, for example), but this will likely change in the future.
The real question is whether or not music really is ready to make its way to the cloud. It seems that everything else has been - be it Email and desktop applications like Word and even rich media like photographs. With the increasingly wide spread of high speed mobile devices like the iPhone it seems only a matter of time before users stop worrying about syncing and transferring music and simply stream it from a central server. I’m not sure users will be comfortable about not owning full copies of any of their websongs (what happens when Lala goes down?), but for 10 cents, it’s worth a shot.
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This I like. I have no problem pulling from the cloud as opposed from my HDD. The 10c price point would also encourage me to triple the amount of music that I buy.
My only question is, at 10c/song, how are the artists profiting? I hate giving itunes my dollars, and watching the artist get three pennies.
The 10c allows you to play the song only in the web-based player they have, not a local MP3 copy. Somewhat like a well organized skreemr.
The full cost of the MP3 is probably around $1. (I haven’t used the site).
“My only question is, at 10c/song, how are the artists profiting? I hate giving itunes my dollars, and watching the artist get three pennies.”
Exactly! They do not, unfortunately. Another issue that Lala will have is that these 10 cents will not be enough to cover the costs of me streaming the song. If a song is 3Mb, for example, and if you stream it, say 10 times, the service is now losing money after subsequent streamings.
@Dave, you’re wrong. They start losing money after around 330 plays. Each full stream of a 3mb song is around $0.0003 (i’m using S3 to define the pricepoint), which is around 333.(3) plays to hit the 10 cents. Going through the tracks I’ve listened to most often in the last 4 years (i keep that data, interestingly), the track I’ve heard the most is at 112 plays.
All this to say that I think Lala may do just fine. And they can still share a (presumably large) percentage with the labels and artists.
lala cost only what you buy. No ads. No subscriptions. I can listen to any song full length song once for free. (6 million to choose from) If I want to hear it again I can add the song two ways. I can purchase the mp3 for my computer, or mp3 player (any mp3 you buy on lala also becomes part of your online collection) If I don’t want to own the song on my own device I can add the song for just 10 cents and keep it on lala. This means I can play that song whenever, wherever and as many times as I want. Once you purchase a 10 cent web song it is all yours via online, but If later you choose to buy the DRM-free mp3 (many only 89 cents) for a personal device to take with you than you’ll be credited the 10 cents you already paid (therefore making the mp3 just 79 cents) lala has many cool features including a music feed to follow other users listening habits. I can forecast my favorite songs. I can embed any song or album on other websites. I think lala is the easiest and most effective online music store. Also if you buy an album from lala you now get the digital copy at point of purchase. This means I can instantly listen to my music while I wait for my CD to arrive via the mail. I love lala.
The pennies are probably still better than the profit share you get when signing with a record label…
Selling music to the masses for the first time with the phonograph: revolutionary
Storing a near-perfect digital reproduction of music on an low-cost compact disc: revolutionary
Digital music compression, allowing the distribution of billions of tracks across the internet: revolutionary
An online music store that lets you preview tracks for a fee: not revolutionary
Bonus points: You can’t even download the songs. You can only play them through the web interface.
Even after you buy them.
Justification? Its putting the music “on the cloud”!
well
techcrunch is retarded
I think Lala is even worse.
what’s worse, someone who’s retarded or excited about being retarded?
This is pretty surprising. I’m not sure how they got the licenses to do this from the music labels but I absolutely love it. It took like 5 minutes to get 5,000 songs from my HD to the site. I can’t imagine uploading those songs the old fashion way. The social aspect of the site is entertaining but I’m in love with the lack of ads. I wish every site could forego the advertising.
I have spent a total of 2 minutes on the site and I am already sold . . . not ever gonna study now. The 10c price point is perfect for me: 100 songs=$10, streaming is not a problem.
Think about it for a second. You are paying $0.10 per song for the “right” to stream music. You own nothing, and when you cancel your account that money is wasted. If Lala closes up shop, you’ve pissed away all your money.
This is the same as using something like Rhapsody, which is $15/mo and lets you stream an unlimited amount of music.
If you really like a song and don’t want the risk to lose it, then you can buy it (for 99 cents?), and the 10 cents you already paid for “streaming” goes straight to the purchasing.
What subscription?? I was under the impression you pay 10 cents for the song and that’s it…is there a monthly cost involved?
This sounds like a great idea, but I think that the whole model is just too abstract for normal people to grasp.
Also, how are they planning on selling people something, even for just 10 cents, that people can already get for free from Grooveshark, or some place else.
I think that a better way for them to monetize would be to charge a couple of dollars per month for the cloud-storage and streaming. It seems to me that the storage and streaming are the real values of the service, and they should try to get a few bucks to cover the bandwidth costs.
People don’t mind purchasing if it’s easy and reasonable. ITunes makes a bundle selling around .89 a track. You’re already using iTunes and it’s really easy to click “buy”. This should work for these guys as well. Great idea. I had this idea a few months ago but didn’t have the resources to go for it at the time. Good for them!
“I had this idea a few months ago but didn’t have the resources to go for it at the time.”
LOL. This must be Beerco Chris.
Why didn’t you just patent it Chris?
It looks to me like Lala is just DRM with a twist- you don’t own the streaming songs, and if they go under (likely) you lose everything.
Pay $0.10 and own nothing!
That is the inherent risk with any cloud based application. What happens if Salesforce goes out of business? Even great empires have fallen.
Techcrunch really needs an international edition. Half these stories sound interesting but are never available because of international licensing issues.
I agree, all of these “awesome” services like Lala, Hulu, Mint etc aren’t available anywhere outside of America, which is becoming increasingly frustrating…
Talk to your gov’t. TC’s main market is still the US. You should be use to the fact that a lot of these services are not available in other countries. You can imagine the legal cost of setting up a site like this, let alone trying to do it in another country.
I imagine these companies are just trying to get a foot hold in the US market and then if the profit is right they will move to expand.
It would be handy if it was at least mentioned in the story. I’m all “omg, this sounds awesome” go to signup…
Get me an iPhone app and I could be into this.
Oooh yeah! I second this. iPhone app would make this killer.
Hell, I might never sync my iPhone again if they had that.
They have an iphone app in the works. You can read about it here: http://gizmodo.com/5066225/lal.....song-sales
Unfortunately this music library directly competes with itunes, so apple declares it a ‘redundant feature’.
Good idea but I’m not sold on the long term success of the company. If they prove their model what’s to stop the big boys like amazon and apple from doing the same thing? The record companies will certainly grant these services the same rights and both obviously have the resources to build a clone if they so choose.
@Jeff http://gizmodo.com/5066225/lal.....song-sales
This looks good at first but as “Chance” and “Joe” both stated I don’t think it will last long, and when it goes so does your $.10 songs….
Also, if you leave the country you can’t access the service..
Lala unavailable internationally
Unfortunately, Lala is currently only available to people in the US.
We are working feverishly to expand internationally, so please stay tuned.
http://kizkscraziness.blogspot.com/
It is unfortunate that Lala is available only in the US. It would grow leaps and bounds if it could replicate this in India with Indian content. same goes for Hulu. I don’t see any benefit of having a ‘US only’ strategy at any point in a business’ life cycle. Hope Lala does expand internationally.
I dont think it is an issue of having a ‘US’ strategy; they have to deal with the licensing (and in Hulu’s case marketing as well) concerns of the clients that own the content and negotiate the use of their content.
Okay so I just downloaded it and initiated the Music Mover stuff. It picked up about 400 songs from their service, and its uploading the rest. Is there a cap on the amount you can store on the cloud? How the hell could they possibly cover those storage and bandwidth costs like this, especially if someone just uploads x gigs and doesn’t even buy anything? I have to believe I’m missing something here.
It only uploads the song if it’s new, and then throws it into a database and gives you the rights to it. Otherwise, it’s just going to give you the rights to that same version of the song that has already been uploaded.
Basically they just have a giant database of music, and the uploader scans what you have against what they have and gives you rights accordingly.
I think Lala is going to be huge. Still a missing piece of the puzzle in the user acquisition formula, but if their music sharing features can be extended within the framework of their existing major label contracts, this will be a game changer.
It’s too bad this is only available for the US, I would love to try this sounds pretty neat.
Hm… sounds like Lala is back in the game.
Too soon. I thought about this sort of model, years ago, when Rhapsody first came out. I always thought, wouldn’t it be great if everything had Rhapsody integreation? I could pay $15/mo and have all the worlds music everywhere!
The problem with all of this is that you can’t use it unless you can get the music onto a mobile device and stream it easily. We just aren’t there yet, even with the iPhone.
This is really a mico-mangaged version of Rhapsody. You pay per song, instead of a flat fee per month, for the “right” to stream music. You own nothing. If you really want to listen to a song, odds are you can just plug it into YouTube and listen to it for free. Yeah the quality sucks, but most people don’t care.
The problem is that, while an interesting model, this isn’t what people want. People want to own their music, put it onto iPods and CDs and listen to it over and over again. That’s what people want. IMO, Apple really figured out digital music.
SanDisk makes a Rhapsody-optimized player that works beautifully.
It doesn’t matter to me whether I actually own music, or access it from the cloud for a subscription fee. What matters is that I *feel* like I own it.
Apple didn’t figure out digital music. Apple stopped the digital music revolution in its tracks, imposed a nightmarish DRM lock-in, and regressed the market to a dependency on hardware brand that is unprecedented in music consumerism.
Rhapsody is a great escape from all that. And so far (barely?) enough people like it to keep Rhapsody in business!
I thought Rhapsody was the greatest thing ever when it first came out. Then they started playing games with what I could and couldn’t listen to, and I quit. I got sick of adding something to my library only to have it disappear a week later. I also tried with an iRiver player when they first started with the DRM song downloads, but it just never worked fluidly. There was always some error that would eventually pop up. I don’t know if they figure that all out by now. But $200/yr is a pretty heafty fee to own nothing either way.
Now I just take that $15/mo and buy a new CD off Amazon every month. Sometimes two if I find a good deal.
As far as I can tell, when you buy the MP3 from lala, it downloads to your local computer and automatically imports to iTunes. Also, their Web player appears to be able to play content purchased with DRM from the iTunes store, which is something I haven’t seen before.
AFAIK, it’s not. It just scans your song and then lets you play their version of the same song.
It’s been half an hour and only 500 songs have synched. This should be much faster than it is.
Their servers are probably getting hammered right now, will probably be faster later.
When I left it synching this morning, my 16,000+ track library was going to take “2 days and 10 minutes”
For pete’s sake — pony up $10-15 a month, go get Rhapsody whose glistening interface makes LaLa look like cave drawings, and put this nonsense behind you. Nothing new here except the inconvenience of hitting that 10-cent button over and over. And if you have any sense of music adventure, you’ll end up spending more money.
I’m tired of Rhapsody. Lala is a fresh way to listen to music. The interface is great. If I’m going to spend $15 a month, I would rather get some MP3 files. If I buy a couple web streams a day at Lala, that’s about $6 per month. Songs I listen to just once (which are many) will have no cost. That leaves enough money to purchase an MP3 album — which Lala automatically ads to my online library. Basically, I will get more out of Lala.
Sure, except Rhapsody is owned by Real Networks. And no one who has actually been computing for more than a couple years would ever trust anything by Real Networks on their computers. :p
Yeah this isn’t going to work in Australia as we have really expensive download plans, many people are still paying 15c a megabyte after their 4gb a month cap…
I personally wouldn’t bother even if it was affordable due to the nature of the license, as mentioned above @Aaron Richard
So i dont know how to really leave trackbacks.. but I love this post and my name or website link or w.e is a link to me copying this post. It was beautifully written… convinced me to try it out
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t Deezer.com pretty much do the same for free?
Deezer seems to have less and less of a collection every time I go on.
This is the way I was thinking the RIAA could stay relevant by providing this exact “cloud music” feature set. You buy an album and you automatically get the music ported to XM/Sirius and other “licensed” internet radio stations based on an OpenID lets say. Furthermore, for buying that album you also get the ringtones for that album for free. Package this with some insentives like: true concert discounts, first listens to upcoming albums of that artist etc and the RIAA could have stayed relevant.
I love the idea of storing my purchased songs in the cloud.
But what’s stopping iTunes from doing the same thing? They already have my purchased music history.
“And best of all: Lala will give you free, unlimited streaming access to every song in your library, even the ones you’ve acquired in ways that weren’t quite legal. Ralston says that the record labels resisted this at first (”why should we give them access to something they stole”), but eventually came to the conclusion that users weren’t going to buy something they’d already downloaded.”
Doesn’t this sound just a BIT fishy? That this service comes along and happens to convince the labels to make a decision that moving forward they’ll act in a way that completely flies in the face of everything they’ve been doing for the last decade? And that they CERTAINLY wouldn’t be interested in taking a peek at what users have uploaded and what might not have been acquired legitimately? Not to mention the fact that this claim is VERY inconsistent with their TOS, specifically:
“Upon successfully registering, your account will be provisioned with dedicated space on a la la server where copyrightable materials purchased through the Site and files uploaded by you may be stored (”Personal Server Space”). You acknowledge that, by uploading music or any content to your account’s Personal Server Space, you are directing la la to store the file. la la does not represent or guarantee the Service will successfully upload or support your file. You agree that you will not upload music or content, and will not request that any music or content be uploaded to your account’s Personal Server Space, that infringes the copyright or other intellectual property rights of any third party.”
and
“You warrant, represent and agree that you will not contribute any Content that infringes or violates the rights of any other party or violates any laws, contributes to or encourages infringing or otherwise unlawful conduct, or is obscene or in poor taste. You agree that use of the Site and Services is subject to all applicable national, federal, state, and local laws and regulations, and that you are solely responsible for the contents of your communications through the Site and Services.”
agreed! lala is not for the timid or privacy concerned. given that mp3.com was sued out of existence for doing the same thing — and given how many times lala has changed their business model / offering — I just don’t trust this.
that reminds me, didn’t they try something similar last year? I thought I read a TC article about their streaming service.
Obviously, my comment is rather late considering the date of the original article and some of the follow on comments; however, Ryan MF an excellent point. La La’s new streaming model reeks of “to-good-to-be-true.” I’m not saying that their model is fantastic, but the free upload and storage of your current library regardless how you got it is NOT to be trusted. How in the world did La La get the record companies to do a complete 180? This makes no sense whatsoever — 12 months max and La La will be in the tank yet again.
Believe me, Spotify is th next revolution in digital music.
I definitely like the idea of being able to listen to songs I already own online without having to upload them. 10c to purchase the song only to listen online? I’d do it; hold on, let me go check underneath my couch cushions for some loose change.
Unfortunately, Lala is currently only available to people in the US. Bad!
I’m sorry, but this is rediculous. What sort of service claims to have revolutionised music but isn’t available outside of the US? Is that some sort of practical joke? If you want to claim revolution you need to change things for everyone from everywhere. Not the elite alone.
This irritates me to no end. what a pity.
agreed, total joke.
How do musicians get paid? After Radiohead’s and NIN’s publicity stunts…. buyers have shown that they actually care where their money goes…
Can anyone see on Lala how musicians get paid?
use deezer !
Very much like Deezer but ‘in the cloud’. It’s hardly innovative but price point is important and $.10 for a track is exceptionally cheap.
Good luck.
This strikes me as a fabulous way for the RIAA to serve exactly one subpoena on exactly one company (Lala) and come up with all the evidence they need to convict every single Lala “uploader” of the same heinous copyright crimes they are suing the rest of the world over.
It’s a bonanza for the first RIAA attorney who spots this opportunity.
Wow, you are Paranoid. If you own the song already, Lala just gives you access to stream a song you already own, there is nothing the RIAA can do about that. Of course if you are stupid enough to upload pirated music, you probably deserve everything the RIAA might throw at you.
Read the article. It says:
“Lala has also done some serious legal wrangling to help you populate your online library. Using the site’s helper application (available on Windows and Mac), Lala can scan your iTunes music library and add every song you already own to your Lala web library, essentially giving you online streaming access to any song you already have on your computer. And best of all: Lala will give you free, unlimited streaming access to every song in your library, even the ones you’ve acquired in ways that weren’t quite legal. Ralston says that the record labels resisted this at first (”why should we give them access to something they stole”), but eventually came to the conclusion that users weren’t going to buy something they’d already downloaded.”
I’m sure every song you’ve uploaded is completely legal. Including the ones your friends ripped and sent you the mp3 of, right?
Idiot.
Yuck.
10 cents per strong for the “right” to stream music? Why not just do a cheap subscription based thing like rhapsody? I am totally against the “pay for the right to stream” idea.
If their servcie takes off, however, and players like the iPod support streaming from Lala, i would totally consider it. However, this will not happen soon, so I will stick to downloading mp3s which can play on my portable.
Isn’t Rhapsody a “pay for the right to stream” service? Except if you stop paying for Rhapsody you can no longer listen to anything.
It seems it is a US only site. Too bad
what about vendor lock-in?
Until mobile devices are constantly connected to the internet, is anyone realistically going to pay for streams that they can get for free, albeit from ad-funded sites?
We7 has backing from the majors and allows you to create playlists and play streamed music as often as you like for free and it’s available to UK users!
Steve - We7
Do you think this is a smart business model Jason?
I like how they realize they won’t compete with itunes and napster and have developed a different pricing strategy and system. But will this work? You can’t access the songs offline or on any mp3 players. They should direct all marketing towards business people who sit in their cubicles 9-5 everyday. These are the people who are at their computers everyday for the majority of the day and would be willing to spend such a low cost to sit at their computers and listen to their music. It’s prob the only time they would listen to the music they buy anyways. What do others think?
Craig
http://www.budgetpulse.com
@Jordan
Maybe you didn’t read, but that’s only if you don’t already own the song. If you download their MusicMover application, it’ll match all the songs you own to songs in their collection and you can stream those as much as you want for free. So basically it’s an online verion of you music collection for just incase your at a computer and you want to listen you your music. Can’t really beat that.
I’m old school - I buy my music on CDs, then import it into iTunes. How would my music be distinguished from tracks that are “not quite legal”? This is important to know up front in case the RIAA gets subpeona-happy.
You can upload tracks you’ve ripped or tracks you’ve stolen. Labels are not worrying about the source of the files in your collection as much as they are trying to encourage the new service and additional purchases.
What is my right to transfer what I purchased to another person? When I rent DVD, I often allow my friends to watch.
The “browse while you play from queue” model is seems to be the new trend in web based music applications. Recently released Indian music site aflatune.com does this and provides not only audio but also video content. Online music applications are coming of age!
If the 10c per streaming song price point goes down to 2-3c, it would make more sense to do a subscription based unlimited access model, just like how local area phone service switched to a flat rate after hitting a low per minute charge.
— Amol.
http://aflatune.com
Another daft site that’s only available in the US, due to stupid record company licensing issues.
Really think that this is a good sign for the industry as a whole. Can only hope that the labels, etc. start to see that opening music up a bit more will really free the whole marketplace from its current stagnation. I’d like to think our social music platform at Maestro.fm has combined many of the great features that the music fan is demanding…including, remote access, social discovery and artist information as you listen.
http://maestro.fm
Did you know…4 out of 5 Maestro.fm employees prefer Maestro to Lala? The 5th employee was unfortunately not in the office today. Check us out, and decide for yourself: http://www.maestro.fm
Spotify has got it right. Two minutes of advertising per hour and you can stream any song or album for as many times as you want for free. They have deals with all the major record companies and the service is lightning fast. Deezer, last.fm, Imeem and the others are far to slow to get that instant feel of a mediaplayer (winamp for example) with every song evere released available. Im not just endorsing Spotify, im saying, with that kind of user experience people will chose to stream when they have access to an online computer. It´s just so convenient. So music streaming, in the style of Spotify (and perhaps a few contenders soon) WILL be the next big thing.
I feel like I piss money away at a bar feeding the jukebox at $1 for 3 songs. $0.10 to stream it a few times seems like a good deal to me