Tonight music-streaming service Lala will be rolling out a number of improvements to its homepage and integrated music player. While the site has had a clean feel since its relaunch last October, it has also been a bit spartan – users had to navigate to various links to find their playlists and songs, and while it looked good it wasn’t as functional as it could have been.
The redesign builds on the site’s persistent music player, which sits at the top of the browser window no matter where on Lala’s site they go. Users can now view a pulldown-menu with a list of songs, and there’s a similar pull down menu for playlists.
Another new addition is the ‘Mix’ button, which allows users to generate a list of similar songs to the one they’re current playing (it is similar to the Genius feature found on iTunes). The feature is great for exploring new songs, allowing users to get exposure to a variety of music they haven’t heard while still retaining control over what they’d like to hear next (radio services like Pandora, while great for discovery, can still be frustrating because they only allow users to skip a limited number of songs).
All in all, it’s a more usable interface, and it also looks much slicker. Other additions to the site include a revamped user profile page and improvements to artist homepages. These are all great, but we’re still itching for the day we’ll get to use Lala’s upcoming iPhone app.
…and still US only…
Who cares. Everyone who wants to use it outside of the US knows about proxies. If they don’t, well they don’t deserve to use Lala then.
I think the group of people who would know how to use proxies is a lot smaller than the group of people who would want to use Lala.
The problem is finding a proxy that can handle the Java.
Yeah Shane, and it’s totally their intention to ignore everyone else, because America rocks, FUCK YOU! Right?
No.
Blame the music industry and their prehistoric business models. Ok?
MP3tunes is a capable competitor and available to all. We’ve had a “mix” feature for more than a year. We call it Playmix but it’s similar in function.
sorry michael i used mp3tunes for a while and the product slowly just went down hill, permanent user of lala now
If you think lala app’s is awesome – checkout Skypes App for the iphone.
Just downloaded it – AWESOME!!!!!
http://www.lala.com
this domain is very good.
it is easy to remember
This is the best music site on the Web. I’m surprised there are no ads. I hope they stay this way. The social features are really fun for finding out what your friends are listening to. I wonder if a Facebook app is far behind the iPhone app.
Fast. Really fast. I’m uninstalling iTunes right now.
Damn…
While mp3tunes may offer many of the same features, they didn’t have nearly the same level of overall polish last I tried. A shame really, MP3tunes as a service is much more open, providing developer APIs and such.
love lala
even w/o the facelift.
lala.com along with mint.com are on the top of my list for current web 2.0 companies. lala is an awesome idea executed on such a high level. The fact that they have managed to do this within the confines of the music industries rule book is simply amazing.
Wouldn’t this be an excellent app for the RIAA to put out where people willing allow them to snoop their internal music libraries? Hmmm….