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Sunday, November 8, 
1:57 pm

Lala.com adds digital locker, ten-cent streams to service

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lala.gifLa 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 Bonanos

See Aug. 8 post from Tech Confidential concerning Warner's investment in Imeem and Lala
For more, see CNET and TechCrunch

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