Lala Opens Music Locker and DRM-free MP3 Store

There’s a new music store in town named Lala.com. TechCrunch and many others are calling it a possible game changer or revolution in music sharing/buying. I was pretty skeptical of the concept at first, but after trying it out I’m pretty impressed. It has potential to be a very nice service as a HTPC plugin, too.

HERE’S HOW IT WORKS:

• You sign up and get 50 free songs for streaming
• There are “streaming songs” that you can listen to (most in their entirety) once before buying. You can then pay 10 cents to purchase (or as they say ‘keep’) the right to stream any of these songs for as long as they exist and you maintain your account with them.
• You can purchase for download any of the songs for an additional 79 cents ($0.89 total) – these are DRM-free, MP3s compatible with all MP3 music players. The vast majority of the MP3 files are encoded using variable bit rates (VBR), aiming at an average of 256kbp
• You can also “match the songs” on your computer (all songs regardless of where you got them) to their catalog and always have free access to those songs via streaming.

The streaming and “syncing” feature sounds very familiar to me. You know why? Because it is almost exactly the type of “music locker” service we once knew as MyMp3.com (don’t go there, it’s an adult site now) and mp3tunes.com which still exists but is being sued by the the record labels. So here I guess the labels think it’s okay because they’ve put their restrictions on the streaming rules and they are getting paid royalties. The business model is similar to Rhapsody except it’s pay per tune, instead of pay per month, for music streaming. It’ll appeal to people if they understand it: No subscription fees, only pay for the songs you want to stream. Plus take it with you for 89 cents total. A closer competitor in concept might be GrooveShark – another service I really like.

Read the rest of this entry at Geek Tonic »