Streaming Music in Lala Land

In the past we've discussed Yahoo! Music, NuTsie, Napster, Dada.net and more. Today, boys and girls, we are going to talk about yet another music download service that thinks they've got it right. Lala is an online music streaming service that offers MP3 downloads from all four major music studios.



With Lala you can upload your entire music collection to their web servers then access your playlists from anywhere on the internet. You can also add any song in their database to your playlists. From our searches they included an extensive collection of old, new and unknown artists.

Alas, nothing is truly free even in Lala Land. With Lala.com you can upload your entire music collection from your computer and listen to it anywhere with an internet connection at no cost ... if your tracks are DRM free and include proper ID3 tags. That means most of the stuff you've downloaded from Limewire probably won't work.

Like some of our previous iTunes rivals, Lala's goal is to build a community around music. Lala uses an ad-free interface (nice) and when you sign up you get 50 free credits (wait a minute).

"What are the credits for?" you ask.

The songs you choose to add to your playlists and stream off the Lala servers cost $.10 each. Your 50 free credits go toward building your Lala locker. We've determined the currency exchange rate is 1 credit = $.10. After you've purchased the right to listen to your song on the internet as many times as you'd like, you also are given the choice to purchase that MP3 track for $.79 or $.89. From there you have access to your purchased songs on your media player of choice, ie. iTunes or Windows Media Player.

Perhaps it's not the $.10 track thing that is the most unsettling (really, it's 10 cents), it's that the music download business is jam packed with Queen bees and Wanna bees and in the past we've seen many music sites shut down their servers so all music purchased through that service ceased to work. And, like the change in your piggy bank, those dimes can really add up.

Although it's tough to shake the cynicism that is created every time one of these new, revolutionary music services are introduced, Lala.com is at least worth a look.

We'd like to mention that although you can burn your purchased music to a CD, we aren't sure if you can take your purchased songs and transfer them to your iPod or other mobile music device. A PC mag article we read indicated there is an "iPod gap." We looked for answers in their FAQ and contacted Lala today regarding mobile device transfer.

Lala got back to us in just a few hours. Here is what they had to say:

“All of the MP3s on Lala are DRM-free music downloads, and are compatible with iTunes and Windows Media Player. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. It refers to software that is used to limit how a file can be used by its owner. This means you cannot freely share, copy, download or use that file. DRM-free means that none of these restrictions apply to the MP3s you buy on Lala. So you can add the MP3s you buy to your iPod.”

Thank you Lala support for your quick turn-around. So, after that winded answer, you can put your purchased music on an iPod.

While you wait, you can check out our reviews of music and MP3 players, or just keep on reading with these other blog posts:

Handango Offers Android Apps and a Contest

Bioshock 2 Will Be a Prequel, er, Sequel...Sprequel

Make Your Own Xbox Live Games!

Motorola Android: It's Not Just for HTC Anymore

Peer to Peer Lending: the Next Internet Craze