La La Media Inc. chief executive Geoff Ralston's seat was empty at a
SanFran MusicTech Summit panel yesterday, while he was probably busy preparing
Lala.com's new service for its overnight
introduction.
After several months of public beta, the company officially launched a
new service that allows both free and paid streaming, as well as a
digital locker service that provides access to a user's music library
via any Internet-connected PC.
Lala touts the service as ad-free, with a clean interface that's more appealing than the ad-heavy
MySpace Music or streaming sites such as
Imeem Inc.
Users are allowed one free play of each song, after which they're
required to pony up 10 cents for the right to stream it as many times
as they'd like. (Users can also buy DRM-free songs, most commonly for 89 cents.) I have my doubts about any new service that competes
directly with free options available on other sites, but Lala adds another wrinkle that makes
its service more compelling. The company also offers an application
that scans a user's hard drive for music files, then provides a copy of
each song for streaming anywhere, anytime, on any computer. This
apparently
includes files of dubious origin; evidently Lala convinced the majors
that customers wouldn't pay for files they'd already stolen.
For
consumers, Lala's service relies on the ubiquity of broadband Internet
connections, and the permanence of the company. The former is trending
upward, although some
observers
are right to bring up train tunnels and other places where connecting
is still impossible. The latter is another matter. People who bought
tracks laden with DRM are already
learning
the hard way that even if you pay for digital music, that doesn't mean
you'll be able to listen to it forever. Consumers would rather own track files that
aren't going to just disappear if the store that sold them goes out of
business. Lala has already shifted its
focus twice in two years, and if I were a customer paying to "own" songs that reside in the cloud, I'd be concerned about where they'll wind up if Lala doesn't stick around.
Lala announced a $9 million round of funding from
Ignition Partners and Bain Capital Partners in 2006, and Warner Music
Group Corp. [
WMG]
confirmed
in August that it invested $20 million in the company earlier this
year. Warner also holds a stake in Imeem, and all four majors are
equity holders in MySpace Music.
-- Paul BonanosSee Aug. 8 post from Tech Confidential concerning Warner's investment in Imeem and LalaFor more, see
CNET and
TechCrunch
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