New Lala.com may be (too) ahead of its time

Lala is betting big that consumers will one day pay to store songs in digital music lockers.

(Credit: Lala.com)

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, the serial tech entrepreneur. (MP3.com is now owned by CNET News publisher CBS Interactive.)

Robertson wanted users to upload copies of their own music into digital lockers. In contrast, Lala has licensed music from the four largest recording companies and a host of indie labels. Once a user downloads the company's software, it will scan the user's hard drive and maintain a copy of their music libraries in the so-called cloud. The beauty of this is it will even make copies of music protected by copy-protection software. The library can then be streamed to any Web-enabled device. Cool, right?

But there's one big obstacle. I still can't access the Web from everywhere. I take San Francisco's Muni train. What happens when I'm underground and don't have Internet access? That means dead air. And above ground, there are still plenty of places that lack Wi-Fi or network coverage.

"You've got to face it, there's nothing you don't do in a browser."

--Bill Nguyen, Lala.com cofounder

Internet access will only continue to grow, but it's got a long way to go before it rivals my iPod or any other digital music player. I download a song to my iPhone and it's guaranteed to play regardless of my location. Bill Nguyen, Lala's charismatic cofounder, disagrees. He sees a world dominated by the browser.

"Will you ever (in the future) use an electronic device if it's not connected or doesn't have a browser?" Nguyen asked. "Think iPhone/iTouch/iPod for a moment. They went from $200 for 60GB to $300 for 16GB. What did you get for the 50 percent increase in price and 73 percent drop in storage? We got a wireless connection and a browser.

"PC's are going the same way," Nguyen continued, "with the hottest category being Netbooks that forego fancy hardware and big screens for an affordable price, light weight and a Wifi connection. You've got to face it, there's nothing you don't do in a browser."

The novel way Lala plans to make money is by requiring people to pay for unlimited access to their songs. If a user wishes to listen to an entire song free of charge, he or she can but only once. To have unlimited access to the music in their lockers, users must pay 10 cents a song (Note: the 10-cent charge only applies for streaming music or "Web songs" purchased from Lala). Great price, but it comes with some serious strings. Remember, you can't download these songs. They have to be streamed.

For those people who want to own their music outright, Lala will be happy to sell tracks free of any copy protection software. But so do a lot of other stores, including Amazon.com, Rhapsody, and Walmart.com.

My point is that there are very few problems that this version of Lala solves in a unique way--plenty of companies, including MySpace and iMeem already offer streaming music. (I won't even get into how difficult it likely will be to explain all of this to consumers.)

The biggest selling point Lala offers is that users can claim their music from a range of devices and that means they are not locked into one gadget or any DRM scheme. Where Lala fails--at least for now--is that it can't deliver music where Wi-Fi or network coverage is spotty.

Lala has to hope technology catches up to its business model.

[theunclesam]

So let me get this straight: If I want to stream my music over the web, I have to pay $.10 a song to listen to my entire library?

Hey Sandoval: Check out Orb.com. I can stream my entire library (minus DRM files. But who buys DRM music these days?) to any web enabled device. It also acts as a media extension so I can stream music and movies to my PS3/360. And the price: $nothing.

[inachu]

I reallly do like Orb! But fast connections are hard to find when I stream from home and listen to it over 40 miles away.

[bartszyszka]

This is incorrect. You can play your own songs for *free* through your browser. You use a tool to help Lala see what songs you have on your computer, it matches them up to songs on its website, then you can play any of those songs for free on their website from any computer with a browser and Internet connection. It's great if you don't want to keep copying songs from home to your work computer.

Now for songs you *don't own*, you have two options. You can pay $.10 a song to listen to them only through the website or you pay around $.79 a song to download a DRM-free MP3 file. iTunes is $.99 and not DRM-free (or more expensive for DRM-free versions), Amazon is $.89 and DRM-free, and Lala is $.79 AND DRM-free. I think we have a winner...

I don't understand all the nay-saying about Lala. They let me do things with my music, access it more easily, in ways none of the major players let me do and it's cheaper. I haven't bought as much music through iTunes or Amazon in all the years they've been around as I have through Lala in just a few months.

[Urza9814]

Hm. The way I read on a different site (Engadget) is that Lala will sell access to any song for 10 cents. So it's not so much streaming your existing library as streaming a new purchased library. Though Engadget never mentioned the scanning and streaming your existing library. But if you have a networked player and network everywhere, 10 cents a song is a lot better than 99 cents a song. Or $20+ an album.

[Orengeman]

10 cents a song is a BAD BAD BAD deal (if it applies to songs you already own). Imagine you paid 99 cents to purchase and download a song, or ripped a cd you purchased. Then you "upload" it to lala (or as far as I understand, simply let lala know that you have this song in your library. Now it's in "the cloud" and you want to listen to it on your web enabled device (handheld, work computer, whatever). But, let's say this is a new song you just purchased and you're really into it, so you listen to it over and over at an average of 2 times per hour over and 8 hour work day. Holy $#!+, you've now spent more $ streaming a song you already had than you did purchasing it. Am I missing something here?

[dbrian56]

Orengeman, yes you have. Once you've uploaded a song to Lala that you may have bought from iTunes or downloaded from elsewhere, you have free unlimited access to it. It's not pay per play. I understand the confusion though because this article does a very poor job of explaining exactly how Lala works.

1. Free locker and access for all your previous music and anything else new that you haven't purchased from Lala.
2. You can listen to entire songs once before you're committed to buy the 10 cent streaming version, or 79 cent DRM free MP3 (even if you buy the web version for 10 cents, that money goes toward the MP3 version as well, if you decide you want it later after having already bought the streaming version, so it's money never lost).. If you choose not to buy it, you'll get the 30 second preview anytime you come back to that particular song.

As long as Lala doesn't get shut down for some reason, they have the potential for being a real game changer.

[rapier1]

I agree completely. In fact, I think the entire internet, like Lala, fails and is overblown because I can't access it on a cocktail napkin while hot air ballooning over the rockies. Nor can I access it on a rusty spoon in the middle of a Kansas cornfield.

Seriously though, how much paint were you hiffing when you wrote this?

[AdamJThompson]

This article makes it sound as if you have to pay 10 cents to listen to your OWN music files, which is NOT true. I use Lala, and I can listen to my entire library as much as I want, as many times as I want, for FREE. You only pay 10 cents if you want to "rent" a track from Lala and add it to your online library, and they give you 50 rental tracks for free. If you want to download and own the MP3, then you pay 89 cents.

I think it's a great service, since I can use it to access almost all of my music from any internet-enabled computer, which is generally where and how I listen to my music.

Greg Sandoval is envious of those who have an unlimited data plan. How much does that cost with an iPhone? I mean, most places I travel within the continental US is 3g on my carrier and things stream just fine. You are right about tunnels, but I drive a car and they don't bother me near as much as they bother you. Sounds like carrier error to me.

[rapier1]

I'm assuming that no one here actually bothered to go to the site and check things out for themselves. According to Lala.com
"Play over 6 million songs for free. Play any song or album once for free. No ads or clutter, all legally licensed. Play your music anywhere. Lala matches the songs on your computer to our catalog, and adds them for free to your online collection. Quick and easy. Buy new music. Add new music to your online collection as you go. Get the web song (unlimited online plays) for 10 cents, or the MP3 download for 79 cents more."

So the music that you already have in your collection is played for free. If you choose to add a song to your collection as a streaming song it 10 cents. If you buy the song to download as an mp3 its 79 cents. So you get the option to purchase songs in multiple ways and stream your personal collection (assuming its in their set of licensed music) pretty much anywhere.

[tikoro]

Hmm...ok...here's a couple thoughts....

A: You can rip music from a streaming source, regardless of where it's from..if it makes noise on your computer, you can save it, manipulate it, download it.

B: Winamp Remote. oh my gosh..share your entire music library with anyone...for free...

Please tell me this is one of the companies that will soon be going under with the current market problems...We need innovation..not duplication for a fee.

[humanssssss]

$0.10 to rent a song and $0.79 more to buy the song. That's expensive. Consider there are many sites out there that are giving the songs out for free. How can company like lala.com compete? The new business model will die.

[rapier1]

Which sites? It would have to be the same artists and songs to be fair comparison. It would also have to be a 'legitimate' source as well.

[banishedheart]

"So you get the option to ... stream your personal collection (assuming its in their set of licensed music) pretty much anywhere. "

"assuming its in their set of licensed music" is a big "if" just to listen to *my* music that I already own.

BTW ... when lala "scans the user's hard drive", how does lala know those songs are leagally owned, hmmn?

[rapier1]

Well, its a free service to listen to your own music. If its not in their collection of licensed music then you really haven't lost anything. Its not like you'd be paying for that part of the service and being that there is no monthly membership you'd get to listen what is likely to be a significant subset of your music via the streaming service.

And how does Lala know the songs are legally owned? I have no idea. My guess is that they just avoid the question entirely.

[zeroplane]

I would have to agree with many of the posts here.

Sure this service may provide a streaming service for general consumers who don't know better. But the more informed, techie consumer will already know how to do this for free.

Step 1
Get an internet Connection

Step 2
Forward ports on your router from a dedicated IP on your local computer to a Dydns.org account. http://www.dyndns.com/

Step 3
Install a media transcoding server on your media server/computer. For example http://tversity.com/home (as there are at least 40 to 50 open source options)

Enjoy the free streaming media goodness.

As the article if you have concern of loosing a streaming connection then you should look for a media player with storage (ala ipod, zune, etc). But if you have on-demand streaming via a wireless device (Iphone, etc)

I also don't like the idea of providing access to my music interests, media files, or any form of analyzing my collection of media. So, nope I will pass on this.

[rapier1]

You forgot

Step 4)
Leave your computer on at all times.

So unless your electric is free you end up paying for the privilege of doing all the work for free. Lets say your computer uses, on average 100 watts per hour or 2.4kWh per day. The average cost for electric in the US is $.11/kWh which means you end up spending around $7.92 a month to power a system so you can stream your music. So if I'm doing a cost comparison of 'free' versus $7.92, the free option seems like a better deal to me.

[iamarcin]

the only way this works so far is because they get advertising from this guy on cnet news and i never heard of Winamp Remote(which sounds just as useless but just as good) because winamp doesnt make enough profit to advertise itself on mainstream.

[gefitz]

You people must either work for the same organization I do, where no one ever reads anything carefully, or you simply cannot read for comprehension (as my second-grade teacher used to call it).

If you own the music, you can stream it from Lala for no cost. Any questions?

[Boss Drum]

LaLa was super great as a CD trading site for users. They should have stuck with that focus.

I have no interest or use for another "me too" mp3 renter/retailer. There is nothing magic/cool/fun that this site adds for me. In fact, it is pretty clumsy. The huge selection of DRM-free amazon mp3's have been getting my $ - especially their daily albums for $1-$4..

[msd1107]

Lala is a great concept. I told it to upload my music library. No sweat. It is only going to take another 13 days to complete.

I have had my music library ripped for 10 years now, with all the ID information entered and the tracks and disks properly organized in meaningful (to me) directories. All the Chinese MP3 players have no problems with this.

But Lala wipes out this organization and plops each track where it thinks it should go, not where I want it to go.

In this respect, it is only a little better than iTunes. iTunes didn't even extract my ID information, and couldn't find half my library to boot, so I had thousands of trackN.mp3 about which I had no clue.

So, again, there is no hope of getting my music library on a portable music player.

[Faztang]

i have been using lala for about 2 weeks now. the best thing about it is that i can upload my entire music collection onto it. mp3tunes.com has a 2gb limit for free accounts. as far as i can see lala does not have a memory limit (at least for now). the music discovery system needs a lot of work though. instead of "following" other users it should offer a music stream of suggested songs based on your uploaded collection of music. And to some of the confused posters up there YOU DO NO NEED TO PAY 10 CENTS FOR MUSIC YOU ALREADY OWN.

[octium8]

I would be curious to know which are those 4 record companies that Lala partenered up with?
Anyone?

[ultradave]

I've been a member on Lala for over a year now. This is easy:
Create an account - you are allowed to listen to any streaming song (available on Lala) for free one time.

If you want to listen to it more than once you are given 2 options - pay 10 cents for a web song - and listen to it anytime you logged in for free or you pay 79-89 cents to d/l the track - which also gives you a copy of the web file to listen to anytime you are logged into Lala and have the mp3 for your player or library at home.

You can choose to install their software PC/MAC compatible which will scan your library and add any of it's known legal files to your library to listen to for FREE anytime you are logged into Lala.com. If Lala does not have the file in their system - you can choose to upload the track - mind you, if you're library is as extensive as mine - 238GB - THIS WILL TAKE SOME TIME. I only let it copy up to 16,000 tracks and now I have an excellent choice of music to listen to while I am stationary here at work. This is the perfect site for anyone who is looking for a stationary place to play their own music without commercials and since it's Flash Based the streaming is very good. I choose to buy my DRM-Free mp3's here because they automatically will add them to your Lala music Library.

This is a one-stop shop - I still trade CD's, but unfortunately the number of trades has decreased drastically since this change, but instead of complaining about it - I've embraced the service and use their website everyday during the week.

And for those of you who fear to install 3rd party software you can also upload tracks to your music library via web browser, although it will only upload 1 track at a time. I uploaded about 37 songs the other day and it only took about 10min.

Another good thing about their music library is that you can queue tracks and make playlists of your own - in some instances it will save some of your playlist info - but it didn't seem to work too well for me. I did notice that on quite a few albums - it did lose the track number - but it retained all of the other information. As long as your ID tags are set - most of that data is uploaded with the track.

btw - Lala does police your library nor is your library available to anyone else to download - although other Lala members can see your library tracks and listen to them streamed - same rules throughout: listen to it once for free, buy the web stream track for a dime or buy an mp3 (only if it's a commercially released licensed track). So your Demo tracks, Promo albums, and Local band mp3's that you upload are not available to others, only you.

Hope this clears up any of the misconceptions.

[McSterritt]

Ha who wrote this It sounds like they are in a middle school writing class. That last line is a good closer... NOT. I recomend checking out the site for your self and not listening to this biases blabber.