Goodbye, Lala Brick Road.
Last week I was perturbed to discover one morning that my go-to online cloud music service Lala would officially close its doors on May 31. I had just heard part of B.o.B’s “Airplanes (feat. Hayley Williams)” on the radio during my commute, and it was
mandatory that I continue the jam I had started in my car upon my arrival at work. As I signed on to listen to the song for free (you’re not getting my $1.29, newbie), I encountered a message headed with a simple “Lala is shutting down”. I vigorously logged in, the “wish right now, wish right now” anthem slowly fading from my head, to find that by the end of the month it would all be lost. The ability to listen to any song for free, sharing said songs with friends, even buying songs for cheaper than iTunes: all gone, at least temporarily. As a reminder, Lala was bought out by Apple last December.
For those of you who are not privy to the Lala scene, the service gives you the option to listen to any song in its expansive music library once in full. If you like the song you can then either make a $.10 web purchase (allowing you to stream the full song on Lala’s website (hence “cloud”) at any time) or pay $.79 to download and effectively forever own the mp3. Upon website death, the value of all previous Lala web purchases will be credited toward the listener’s iTunes account. That’s… waaaaait a minute. Doesn’t that suck? Lala’s shutdown message claims, “In appreciation of your support, you will receive a credit in the amount of your Lala web song purchases for use on Apple’s iTunes Store.” Operative clause: “in the amount of”. This means that TEN web songs will be needed to acquire just ONE “credited” song on iTunes. My, how appreciative. I’m lucky enough to not have gone crazy buying web songs, but for someone that has built an entire library on this model, well, I truly feel for you. Losing all that music that you’ve personally built up over time must really be a dick in the ass, but you probably shouldn’t have been so cheap to begin with. Anal deserved.
Earlier today the CEO of Warner Music hinted at Apple’s eventual assumption of Lala’s (and several other online services’) subscription model. Until now Apple’s iTunes has been the internet’s leading digital distributor but they have yet to tackle streaming music, which is shaping up to be the next substantial link in the evolution of music. Other growing subscription services like Spotify allow users the same freedoms of Lala but with the added perks of syncing portable devices and sharing music with friends on Facebook or other social networks. If Apple doesn’t do anything to one-up the current leaders in this snowballing new trend, they could lose their momentum in the industry. We wouldn’t want Apple to not be the absolute best at everything, would we. What do you think? Will there be a web-based iTunes in the near future?
Meanwhile, Spotify has only launched in a few countries overseas and will add The Netherlands to its roster on May 18. Let’s hope it comes to the states soon. And make sure to rape and pillage Lala before the end of the month.
