I’ve been worrying about the fate of Lala ever since it was acquired by Apple last week. The speculation I’ve read seems split between thinking that Apple intends to embrace the company’s long-term vision, creating a powerful Web-based version of iTunes, and suggestions that Apple only bought the service to poke Googlein the eye.
I first
discovered Lala months ago, thanks to a deal it struck with Google, which put
the service at the top of music-related search results.
When you create an account and log in, you can listen to any song in full once
for free. If you want to listen to it again, you can either buy a physical CD,
which also grants you permission to stream the song online, download the mp3,
or pay 10 cents to buy a “web song”. The web song lets you the stream
the song as much as you want, from anywhere.
Web songs are exactly how I want to listen to music. I don’t listen while I’m walking or commuting, but I do listen while I’m at a computer, and I want a synced service that gives me access to my songs no matter where I am. I’m happy to pay for this, and 10 cents per song is a great example of micropayments at their best–each song feels cheap, and I find I want to buy a lot of them.
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