How Lala.com Got Me to Buy Music Online
Pirates have been in the news quite a bit recently. From the more traditional Somali pirates to the Pirate Bay trial, I haven’t thought this much about those swashbucklers since the movie “Hook” first came out.
The Pirate Bay trial, which recently returned a guilty verdict, is only the latest in the music industry’s war against music pirates. The litigious RIAA was voted The Consumerist’s “Worst Company of the Year” in 2007, narrowly beating Haliburton. Although this year’s contest is still underway, the RIAA didn’t even make the sweet sixteen – they changed tactics in December of 2008, and now no longer blindly sues individual file sharers (in one case, the RIAA stayed a case for 60 days because the defendant had died and they wanted to give the family time to grieve before proceeding).
The Internet has thrown a rather large monkey wrench into many business models, from the music and movie industry to newspapers and magazines. How do you get people to pay for content when they can just get it for free? For me and music, the answer is Lala.com.
I always found file sharing to be a rather time-consuming, inexact and oft-confusing endeavor. At first, I went through with it anyway because I had a lot of free time, and who wanted to drop $14 on a CD that would have to be ripped on to a computer anyway? When iTunes came along I would buy a song here or there for expediency, but who could afford to build a substantial collection of music at $1 a song? And there was always the issue of listening to my personal music collection on my work computer.
Then, on what I’m sure was a terrifically sunny day, I found Lala.com. Lala is pretty much the perfect compromise, one that pleases both the record labels and the music lovers. Here’s why:
- You can listen to any song (or album) in its entirety once. Feel like listening to the new Neko Case album but don’t want to commit to anything just yet? You got it.
- If you like the Neko Case you can either: buy the Web album for about $.80, or buy the mp3 version for about $7.50.
- You can upload your entire music collection to Lala.com and listen to it from any computer, as long as it has an Internet connection.
- You can be lazy and have Lala make an hour-long Pandora-esque playlist based on your favorite artists.
- And of course, you can do all sorts of social media stuff like follow your Lala friends.
I’ll be frank – Lala has completely changed my relationship with music. Whereas before I would listen to the same tired album over and over, I can now listen to all sorts of music once, and then, if I’m even a little into it, I buy the Web album for $.80. It’s like magic. Legal, sensible, fair magic.