Death to Lala! Long Live the New Online Music Listening Service!

A Eulogy:

I write this from my bed, listening to Judee Sill's self titled debut from 1971, I am troubled by a few thoughts. Why have a I never heard her before now? What happened to cause her to die at such a young age with only two albums to her name? Now that Lala.com is being put down by the Evil Empire (Apple for those of you keeping track at home), where am I going to preview music?


I first came across lala through a link on a web site about a year ago. My initial response was one of interest, but merely as a means of looking at music. But after relying on my mp3 player at work for music listening for too long, I decided to look into other avenues of listening to my music at work. My first thought was to buy an external hard drive, but didn't have the money. I also didn't really want to leave a hard drive at work because I don't trust the people I work with with a jump drive let alone an external hard dive. Then I thought about online file hosting, and again it was much too cost prohibitive. Then I came back to lala. It offered everything I was looking for and more. Once a member, for free, you could sync your collection to your account. If lala didn't have a corresponding match, you could then upload the rest of your collection. Again, for free.

Once I made up mind and dived in, it was like an awakening. It took about a week off and on for me to fully sync and upload my collection. Which may seem like along time, but it wasn't a constant streaming of music (I've got roommates who need to use the internets as well). Listening to my music through lala was great. Not only did I have my entire collection at my fingertips, but I had a seemingly never ending collection there as well. I ended up looking up bands I had always wanted to listen to, but never had the opportunity to do so. I also found lots of incredibly out of print albums, for a more than fair price. Should I pay anywhere form $20 to $50 for an obscure out of print album, or generally $7.50 for any given album? Hmmm... I wonder. Oh wait, I'm not retarded (most of the time). This however is not as clear cut as I would like it to be. I have a very real habit that needs feeding in collecting music, and I have trouble considering buying mp3's as collecting. That however is another entry (that I'm currently working on) altogether.

Have I mentioned that one could listen to any song once all the way through? Something I have yet to see any other site offer. This coupled with the web album function is perhaps my favorite point of lala. A 30 second clip of song is no way to test out music. It will never convey even the simplest of three minute pop songs properly, let alone some of the 8 minute epics to be found in the music world. How has it taken a site this long to do something like this? Brilliance in the simplest of gestures. Then there is the web album, which is buying the right to stream the album as many times as you want. Why is this a good thing? I listened to "Know Better Learn Faster" by Thao with the Get Down Stay Down and was mildly impressed. I kind of liked a few songs, but not really willing to part with 8 or 9 bucks. 1 dollar to be able to listen to it as many times as I liked? That I could handle. After the second listen I was hooked on it, and now own the album. Proof the model works, at least on me. This isn't the lone example either.

Shortly after I started my lala account, it was announced the Evil Empire had bought lala. A day of great sorrow. I tried not to think of all the ways Apple could fuck my shit up by buying lala. I worried about what was going to happen to my new favorite site, and was all but crying about the falling sky. Then nothing happened. Months passed and nothing happened. I thought maybe Apple decided not to devour lala piecemeal. Fast forward to May 1st. I wake up to an email on my phone, announcing to my tired eyes that lala was indeed shutting down. No real explanation was (or has been) given by lala or Apple. Just speculation about the whys and what's to come. After a week of thinking about it, I am at a loss for what to do. I refuse to use iTunes. Amazon is one alternative as far as mp3 shopping. Really though, there is no replacing lala for me. It did so much, and was such a multifaceted tool for me, I don't think there is an adequate replacement at this point and time. My thanks to lala, and the software development that went into creating such a truly magnificent site. The worst part is that Apple will end up raping lala's still warm corpse for it's own shitty service, people will talk about what a brilliant revolution it is (which is an impressively hard task to accomplish while fellating Apple at the same time), and then make claims about how they provided this service before anyone else. Long story short, it's business as usual for Apple. I am comforted only by the fact that once, there was a great site, that provide me with hours of entertainment.