[BLOG] Much Love for Lala
I have a long history of not giving a damn about music organizers, online music stores, and especially any combination thereof. For 10+ years my digital music organization has consisted of Windows Explorer and right click > play in Winamp, and I've been reluctant to abandon the methods of obtaining music that have served me well: downloading music through not-so-legal channels and then supporting artists I like by buying their CD and ripping to disk. This has not only allowed me to listen to entire albums before spending my hard earned dough, but has also enabled me to keep copies of the music I love in something better than the encodings that sound like they're being stepped on which most music stores offer.
Recently however, as life got more complicated with a wife, kids, and career; a decade of digital music had been piling up into folders that I just didn't feel like sorting through anymore, not to mention the time spent finding, listening to, and purchasing music in three different places. I tried a few popular organizers, but promptly removed them and had given up hope. Enter Lala.com
Initially I actually had no intentions of using Lala as an organizer/music store, but was attracted to the idea of uploading music to the cloud to be streamed back from anywhere; which is incredibly awesome by the way. However, the clean, simple, ad-free interface of Lala sucked me right in. Before long I had begun uploading all of my music to Lala and was using it as my primary music player. After getting everything tagged and organized I soon found myself in the music store burning through the 50 free credits that come with all new Lala accounts.
The music store is where Lala really shines; offering simple search, relevant recommendations, and artist biographies that are pulled straight from Wikipedia. Want to preview a track before purchasing? No problem, all of the songs in Lala's extensive library can be played exactly once in their entirety to make sure you like what you're buying. Then, "web versions" of tracks can be purchased for a mere 10 cents that will allow you to add the song to your library and stream as many times as you want. Want to take it with you? For 79 more cents you can download a DRM-free variable bit-rate MP3 averaging 256kbps.
As an added bonus, when you purchase whole albums there is a discounted price. For example, I just bought a web version of the new 11 track TV on the Radio album "Dear Science" for 80 cents and a 22 track Bad Religion compilation album from 1995 for 88 cents.
Lala, I think I'm in love.
Recently however, as life got more complicated with a wife, kids, and career; a decade of digital music had been piling up into folders that I just didn't feel like sorting through anymore, not to mention the time spent finding, listening to, and purchasing music in three different places. I tried a few popular organizers, but promptly removed them and had given up hope. Enter Lala.com
Initially I actually had no intentions of using Lala as an organizer/music store, but was attracted to the idea of uploading music to the cloud to be streamed back from anywhere; which is incredibly awesome by the way. However, the clean, simple, ad-free interface of Lala sucked me right in. Before long I had begun uploading all of my music to Lala and was using it as my primary music player. After getting everything tagged and organized I soon found myself in the music store burning through the 50 free credits that come with all new Lala accounts.
The music store is where Lala really shines; offering simple search, relevant recommendations, and artist biographies that are pulled straight from Wikipedia. Want to preview a track before purchasing? No problem, all of the songs in Lala's extensive library can be played exactly once in their entirety to make sure you like what you're buying. Then, "web versions" of tracks can be purchased for a mere 10 cents that will allow you to add the song to your library and stream as many times as you want. Want to take it with you? For 79 more cents you can download a DRM-free variable bit-rate MP3 averaging 256kbps.
As an added bonus, when you purchase whole albums there is a discounted price. For example, I just bought a web version of the new 11 track TV on the Radio album "Dear Science" for 80 cents and a 22 track Bad Religion compilation album from 1995 for 88 cents.
Lala, I think I'm in love.
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