I got a mail saying that Lala is closing down May 31st.

This really sucks. I've bought CDs based on being able to hear them first at Lala, and avoided wasting money on bad CDs the same way. Lala also made it a lot easier for me to participate in bracketology and the moderate poll.

Are there any other services that allow you to listen to an album once without having to pay full price for the whole album?

I don't know why it's closing down, but I wouldn't be surprised if ITunes paid somebody off to legally bully them into doing it.

Well, you could just use youtube (but they don't have Prince or Van Morrison).
I think ilike lets you listen once for free, but i'm nott 100%

Apple acquired Lala a while back and closed it down.


http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/apple-kills-lala-music-service/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

fuck apple, seriously. lala was so superior.

I'm never buying a song from iTunes again (not that I really have been anyway, after discovering Lala). I'm sad at losing my go-to service for listening to albums all the way through and buying MP3s for cheaper than anywhere else, but now that I know Apple was behind it, I'm just pissed off. iTunes is horribly overpriced and a useless tool for discovering new music. I guess I'll take my business to Amazon.com until I find some place better.

Well, Youtube has a lot of songs up, but you have to search for each one individually. You can't just press play and have the album play. I don't know if bands still put stuff up on Myspace, but at least that's not completely useless. Maybe Rhapsody is an option, but I'd have to research that. I think there's a monthly fee for unlimited plays or something. (If Apple hasn't acquired that too.)

But yeah, seriously, step over Microsoft. There's a new computer tyrant in town.

If Microsoft is Big Brother, Apple is the bad guy from Chinatown.

This really sucks. What I loved about Lala is that if you bought a CD from them (they didn't have much of their catalog on sale physically but they had most of the good stuff there for cheaper than Amazon) then you could then also listen to the album through the Lala player and re-download the MP3s of that album at any time. Really genius system. Of course, iTunes just needed to screw all that up.

listen.grooveshark.com

Looks like Rhapsody is only $9.99/month to stream any song at will. That's acceptable, as it will save me a lot of money on bad CDs.

Grooveshark seems like something that's useful but incomplete. (I assume it's legal, right?) I think what I'll do is try it out with Grooveshark, then see if the $10/month is worth the difference in quality of service.

Until then, is there any advance listening anyone recommends for the next moderate poll in either 2011 or 2012? Anything I just *must* hear, while Lala is still around?

Grooveshark is about as legal as youtube, I think. Sometimes the albums are messed up with incomplete or multiple tracks/track numbers, but usually there's a playlist that has the correct songs.

Rhapsody and Napster are both good options and Spotify is coming to the US this fall. Especially Rhapsody if you have an iPhone or a Droid. Plus, the reason Apple acquired Lala is to roll out their own streaming service which should be fabulous considering the amount of content available in the Itunes store. It's definitely coming to iTunes, they know they have an archaic business model which has flatlined in the past year.

This is the way this stuff always works, independents perfect the business model and the big corps make it profitable. Lala's end is a beginning because streaming is finally the future of digital music.

I took a look at Grooveshark today and that is messed up. I guess it's fine if you just listen to singles, but for albums it doesn't hold a candle to Rhapsody and I'm sure Spotify. Can't wait till Spotify gets here.

I use Rhapsody currently and I know it's saved me lots of money from not buying albums I likely would've on a chance if I couldn't hear them. Plus the freedom of just streaming ANYTHING I want is nice. Sometimes it even kind of seems like it makes my cd collection obsolete. But not really, because my collection rocks.

Apple is always slow when they make acquisitions to roll stuff out. But, almost everybody thinks that the plan is for Apple to do such a thing. Why else would they but Lala? There's no way iTunes can continue to be profitable under the current business model. It's seen a sharp decline the past two years especially last year, and portable music is no longer needed with 3G/4G smart phones becoming the norm.

So in short, the answer is that nothing has been confirmed but it's inevitable.

I don't know, 'One free listen for any song' seems kind of un-Apple like to me. But if they really are planning to offer the exact same service, then that's awesome.

Although I'm still against anti-competitive business models on principle.