Lala.com

TechCrunch broke the story Tuesday that Seeqpod, a Web search engine for music files, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company is facing lawsuits from record company Warner and EMI because even though it doesn't post any material itself--it's just a search engine--it makes no effort to filter out copyrighted material.

So far, the site itself still up and running, but my absolute favorite name-it-and-play-it service, Songerize, which uses Seeqpod as its back end, appears to be broken. The labels have been targeting independent developers who use Seeqpod's API, so I wonder if the heat got … Read more

I've often praised JamBase, which lists tens of thousands of shows across the United States. If you want to know who's coming to town or who's playing tonight, it's infinitely more convenient than scanning the listings in your local paper.

Now it looks as if JamBase has some strong competition in the form of Bandloop. It's hard to improve upon JamBase's near-perfection, so Bandloop works in basically the same way, with a few improvements here and there.

Artists and fans populate the show database, which keeps it up-to-date--the site has more than 50,000 … Read more

A fitting anthem for Michael Robertson these days would be The Rolling Stones' hit, Get Off of My Cloud.

For nearly a decade, Robertson, the often controversial cofounder of MP3.com and Linspire, has toiled to store music in the cloud, the term used to describe the seemingly limitless amount of data and services accessible with a Web browser. But in the past, Robertson's efforts have led him into epic legal battles with the music industry. That's where he finds himself once again. In November, EMI filed a copyright suit against him and his music service, MP3tunes.com. … Read more

I wrote about the latest version of Lala when it started beta-testing back in May. At the time, I dismissed it as a weird hybrid between all-you-can-eat subscription services like Rhapsody and free streams from the likes of Imeem. I didn't understand who'd pay 10 cents to stream a song an unlimited number of times when there are already plenty of free (mostly ad-supported) streaming sites out there.

So I was surprised to see reviews of that service Monday that used words like "spectacular" and "revolution." As it turns out, Lala has made a … Read more

Lala.com is finished helping users swap CDs and no longer is it interested in just being a Web radio station.

Stick with me here because Lala.com's new business model, as well as its history, is kind of convoluted and that's part of the problem.

The music service--on its third incarnation--is offering a way for consumers to store songs in digital storage lockers and access them from any Web-enabled device. For those of you who have been around a while, this may sound a lot like MP3.com or even MP3tunes.com, companies started by Michael Robertson, … Read more

Lala.com has a history of coming up with innovative ideas that don't quite conquer the world. The company is best known for its online used-CD trading service, which is an interesting idea but works well only if you have a large list of CDs available to trade.

It also offers a music "locker" service that allows you to upload your music then listen to it from any computer with an Internet connection...but it only works with MP3 files, so you're out of luck if you've been using (for example) iTunes to rip your … Read more