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.
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.
MP3tunes, a company created by MP3.com's original founder, Michael Robertson, has launched a new service called LockerSync 3.0. The LockerSync service allows users to upload their music collection to the MP3tunes server, where it can be accessed a streamed to any computer or Web-enabled device. The LockerSync system has more than a few things going for it: it's free; storage space is unlimited; the uploader application is cross-platform and easy to use; and the browser-based jukebox application works really well.
The LockerSync upload/download utility works on Mac, PC, and Linux.
The appeal of a system like MP3tunes and LockerSync, is that gives computer-hopping digital music junkies a means to sync all their scattered DRM-free music to one central, secure, online locker. Not only can all your computers (work, home, laptop) upload to this online storage locker, but they can download from it as well, ensuring that every computer in your life can automatically refresh from one central music database. As someone who often laments the disconnect between the music collection on my work computer and the music collection on my home computer, LockerSync is one of the better solutions I've come across that can consolidate my music in one place. Trouble is, I just don't know if the problem of dislocated music libraries bothers me enough to install the LockerSync upload/download utility on all my computers. For serious music junkies with digital music haphazardly spread across multiple computers, LockerSync might be just the answer.
Pick and choose what you want uploaded to your music locker, or just upload everything you've got.
To get started with the MP3tunes LockerSync system, you'll first need to download the LockerSync utility in order to upload and download files back and forth to your computer. Once up and running, you can use the utility to upload your entire music library, or a specific artist, album, song, or music folder. LockerSync supports MP3, WMA, M4A, and OGG audio files. Album artwork will upload as well, so long as you already have album artwork associated with your tracks. Even without the artwork, once you have music uploaded you can use an MP3tunes feature called 'Tune Up' to scan the All Music Guide (AMG) database to dress up your naked files. After uploading is completed, its a good idea to go to the Sync Schedule tab determine how often the LockerSync utility checks your hard drive for new music to upload. You can schedule the sync to happen every day, or just once or twice a week. If you don't schedule an automatic sync, the point of the whole system sort of falls apart.
Beyond keeping your music collection synced across all the computers in your life, another benefit of the MP3tunes LockerSync system is the ability to stream your online music library using a browser-based jukebox application. When users log into their locker, their music collection is presented to them in an iTunes-like Web application. Unlike feature-limited Web radio jukeboxes such as Pandora, or Slacker, the music in your locker is yours to do with as you please--it can be deleted, repeated, shuffled, and dropped into playlists. The audio-streaming quality pumped out of the jukebox is determined by your connection speed, however, you can manually lock the audio streaming quality to a specific setting in order to keep it from eating up too much bandwidth. Accessing and streaming your uploaded music collection may have limited appeal, but it could be a good solution for those wage slaves who aren't allowed to store music on the company computer.
If you're wondering what the financial motivation is for MP3tunes to provide this free service, their hope is to lure you into upgrading to their Premium Locker service. For $40 a year, the premium service enables users to directly stream music to net-connected devices, including laptops, mobile phones, and home stereos.
Once your music is uploaded, the MP3tunes locker Web application acts as a full-featured jukebox you can access on any device with an Internet connection. The ability to view your music's album artwork is crippled until you upgrade to the premium account.
- prev
- 1
- next
