Give up iTunes in Favor of Lala & Save Money
This past week, a co-worker recommended that I check out Lala.com, a site that you can listen to and purchase music on. In the past I have used iTunes, but I flat out hate the iTunes interface, speed, and functionality. I view iTunes as a luxury that I choose not to pay for unless I get free downloads via a gift card. So I thought I’d check out Lala under the guise that it was ‘better and cheaper than iTunes’.
After one hour of using Lala, I started to recommend it to all of my friends. If you’ve tried Lala before, you might be in for a surprise. Apparently, this is the third incarnation of their service, with a slightly different business model this time around.
Here’s how Lala works. You have instant ‘press play’ access to over 6 millions songs for free. Not just previews, but the actual full song. If you want to add a song to your personal playlist, it costs 10 cents per song. If you want to download as an .mp3, the songs run about .79 to .99. Lala is a great way to listen to an entire song before buying. It’s also head and shoulders above iTunes in that it is ‘cloud music’. Microsoft is to iTunes as Google is to Lala. You can log in on any computer and your songs are all there. Here is why I think it’s a great service:
1. Lala is Cheap
Being that this is a personal finance site, let’s hit on this aspect first. It’s a different business model than iTunes. You can listen to any song in their library for free to determine if it’s worth adding to your playlist and/or downloading. They have over 6 million songs. Sign up and get 50 free songs. Beyond that, it only costs 10 cents per song. You can spend a lot less than you would through iTunes if you don’t feel the need to have a .mp3 for every song you want.
2. Lala is Intuitive
The interface is great. I find the iTunes interface to be clunky and not very intuitive. Lala is the opposite. There are some pretty advance features including queuing up songs to listen to and some nice community features. There is also a way to add all of your iTunes or .mp3’s to your playlist. These guys seemed to have thought of all the ways that iTunes is deficient and solved them.
3. Lala is Legit
This isn’t a file sharing service. It is a legit business that has licensed music.
4. Lala is Fast
ITunes seems very slow and clunky in comparison. I had no connectivity issues and page load times are extremely fast.
5. Lala is where you want to be
I like that I can log in at home or work and have access to all of my songs without having to mess around with transferring them from one computer to another. I also like that if I want to download to .mp3, then the songs are only .79.
Conclusion on Lala:
At the very least, Lala is worth checking out and getting your 50 free songs. Since it’s faster, more convenient, and cheaper than iTunes, you might end up sticking around for more. It’s free to sign up. Give Lala a try!
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ITunes is waaaaaaaay over-rated. I can’t believe how much it has blown up to being the business that it is in light of how bad the user interface is. I’m going to give Lala a try out of spite. =)
iTunes ticks me off in so many ways it’s not worth thinking about anymore. The userface, the arrogant marketing — everything just turns me off.
Lala looks awesome, though. Thanks for the link — just signed up.
Yep, iTunes is slow and clunky. At first site this looks a lot better. Will definitely give it a trial.
If you want to just listen to any song you want for free check out grooveshark.com. I still (illegally) songs but when I purchase, do so from itunes, I also have received gift cards. Usually it’s music I already want to buy so it’s easy enough to find and complete. I agree the interface of the store is a bit confusing and hard to find some new songs. Can you buy lala songs and use them on an ipod or transfer them to itunes?
@ Craig – yes, you can move songs between lala and itunes.
I have been using Lala.com since July 5, 2008, and I immediately fell in love with the service. My desktop PC is my “stereo,” so Lala does what I need it to do. I also enjoy being able to listen to my music when on vacation and visiting others. Also, my external hard drive just crashed, but I am still enjoying my music, thanks to Lala. My only concern is whether the business model can be sustained. What company makes money streaming media?
Does LaLa offer their music in AAC (MP4)?
Just came across this article while searching for a way to move my iTunes library off my Mac and into the cloud for easy access from anywhere. I’ve never heard of Lala, but after a few minutes poking around with it, I’ve signed up and importing my 4,500+ songs into my account. Listening to it now and the quality is excellent. Plus, it’s really easy to embed a song on a blog or Facebook. Pretty sweet features!
“Does LaLa offer their music in AAC (MP4)?”
yep
What happens when/if lala goes out of business?
Cool also (plug – mates site) try music.gm to listen no buying. Great site 6million tunes I can listen to all way through good stuff!
Pete
Thanks for post this review. I’m trying to advocate to everyone I know how awsome and affordable Lala is, especially if you use your computer as your stereo and you have a consistent WiFi connection. Lala has saved me a couple of hundred dollars because now I can purchase music at a really affordable rate–music that I would have never purchased otherwise. Paying like a $1.20 for web access to an entire CD is simply a no brainer when it comes to saving money. I think the more people that use Lala, the better it will become, and we can be assured that the company will be around for a long time.
David –
Funny how no one answers your question: What if Lala.com goes out of business?
A couple of google searches revealed no clear answer for me, either. I was wondering the same thing.
I’m guessing you would just lose everything you paid 10 cents for, but the mp3s of course you would keep as long as you have them saved. It’s the only logical answer I could see.
I’m still sitting on the sidelines with my money. They could get me if they had some clause that said: “If lala.com goes out of business, we promise you will be able to download all of your 10 cent songs.” I’m sure they can’t make that work with the labels, but it would be nice!
If anyone knows for sure please post!
@Sam & @David
Apple just bought Lala, and they are not in danger of going bankrupt as far as I know.
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704342404574576544196064138.html
Besides, any company you buy music from has the possibility of going bankrupt.
Didn’t you mean, “Microsoft is to Google as iTunes is to Lala”?
@ Roger… hah, yes, exactly.
So far I love to listen to the full track but when i looked up reviews CNET came up and all of the good reviews are from FEB/APR 2007 and 2009 only has terrible reviews for customer service, bad downloads and such. Any comments on customer service? Quality of downloads?
Thanks
To Lala music:
Nobody told me about giving my credit card information at the beginning… I read: sign up for free music listening and nothing about the misserable 30 seconds of stream either if I signed up.. so if I knew about giving delicate and personal information just to listen to music, I wouldn’t sign in. I will give feedback about this site to the competence, because of site like this, is why we go to Youtube and convert the songs. I got really angry and It was very disapointing to fall in your game, just like every scam site, easy first and then the hard and ugly bad experience… wow…
Francisco Crispin,
Boston MA, USA
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