Ob-ladi, Ob-Lala, Life Goes On

On May 31, the Lala music service, which valiantly attempted to be your full-service iTunes in the cloud, will go off-line. Presumably, the reason they’re shutting down is to make room for an authentic version of the service from Apple itself. Apple bought the company last December, and since then there has been hopeful (and not-so-hopeful) speculation about how Apple would reconfigure the streaming music app. Will they revolutionize iTunes, bringing cheap, streaming music to the masses? Or did they purchase Lala just to shut down a competitor? The most interesting take I’ve seen suggests Apple’s motivations might include a little bit of both strategies:

In the days and weeks that followed the Lala acquisition announcement, commentator after commentator pontificated about how Apple would move into the streaming music business, ala Lala. But that business makes no sense for Apple, which generates revenue from selling music — not giving it away or streaming it on the cheap. More importantly, streaming offers limited benefits to iPhone OS devices. Apple already sells low-margin content to generate sales of high-margin devices. Streaming doesn’t make sense, particularly when Apple has done so well with content people own — or in the case of movies, sometimes rent.

However, a TV subscription service would make sense because of its potential to disrupt how people consume the content. Hulu shows there is demand. If Apple offered the long-rumored TV subscription service for the rumored 30 bucks a month — heck, even $50 — I’d cancel my AT&T U-verse account the same day. Cheap portable TV is the logical next stage beyond DVRs. Apple has the devices to do just that, whether the content is streamed, downloaded with DRM protection — or both.

For Apple, a TV or other video subscription service is a more logical use of Lala technology and staff than music streaming. I would watch for TV subscriptions long before Apple would set up a music streaming service. So that makes a third major reason — and one I didn’t give in December — for Apple acquiring Lala.

What we’re losing

Today’s post is not going to bother predicting what Apple will come up with after Lala, except to say it probably won’t be as good. I come today to mourn. Here’s what Lala meant to me:

• On-demand streaming to any computer of nearly my entire library of music. For free. As often as I like.
• Scrobbling to Last.fm, with optional sharing on Facebook / Twitter.
• Purchase new “web” songs for only 10 cents. Or entire records for around a buck. They can only be streamed, sure. But that’s a great deal for me, because most of my music listening occurs via PC.
• Add the currently playing track to a playlist, so I could keep tabs on songs that are especially awesome.
• Preview any record in their 6 million track catalog for free. Hear the entire record once without paying anything.

The preview capability became more useful overtime as music sites like Pitchfork, The Onion A.V. Club, and Paste began to include Lala’s widget for the particular albums they were reviewing. Seems like a small thing, but it’s what I will miss the most. Before Lala, I had been pretty lazy about actually listening to a new releases. I only made the effort for artists I already knew or for releases that had a lot of positive buzz. But once each review I read also functioned as a virtual listening station, I could afford to be more curious. It’s this functionality, either with Apple or another service, that I most fervently hope can continue.

Potential Substitutes

I’ve been experimenting with a few Lala competitors in the hopes that one of them can help fill the void. I should first say that Pandora, which is loved by many, doesn’t begin to fit the bill because I can’t listen to songs or albums on demand. Also, their catalog has around 750,000 songs compared to 6 million or more in competing services. It’s an awesome supplement and its iPhone app is swell. I love it. But Pandora doesn’t give me everything I need. Here are some other options.

Rhapsody

I took the 14 day trial with Rhapsody and it was pretty nice. But I canceled. I found the $9.99 per month price a little steep. In fairness they do offer quite a bit for the price.

Pros

• The largest catalog available online at 9 million tracks. About the only thing I couldn’t find was stuff from Drag City, who seem to be generally averse to discounted digital downloads / streaming.
• Great playback options, including both on-demand albums and songs and a Pandora-like “radio” feature that plays a similar artists.
• Personal profile page that includes your listening history, complete with RSS feeds.
• Superb, full-featured iPhone app that performed pretty well in my car. I made it about halfway to Victoria from Houston before I lost contact. As part of the subscription, you can download songs for offline-streaming. I didn’t test this, but many user reviews suggested this didn’t work all that well.
• Sharing to Facebook, Twitter.

Cons

• High price.
• Hard to add the currently playing track to a playlist.
• No native scrobbling to Last.fm (although I did find a service that will do it for you).
• Social media sharing function is kind of clunky and includes spammy ad links.
• Tracks you listen to via the radio service won’t be included in your listening history.
• No way to stream / sync your own library of tracks.

Mog.com

Mog started off as a Last.fm competitor that kept track of your listening history. It evolved into a music blog network. But this year they’ve added streaming capabilities from all four major labels. For $5 per month you can stream entire records or songs on demand. Like Rhapsody it includes a radio feature that will play you similar artists. But Mog’s Radio is different from Pandora or Rhapsody: it features a unique slider that will play only songs by your selected artists, only songs by other artists or somewhere in between. You decide what the mix will be based on how you position the “slider” control. It’s really cool. This is what I’m using for now.

Pros

• 6 million tracks, or about what Lala had.
• Only $5 per month, with a free month if you pay bi-annually ($25 every six months)
• Both radio and on-demand plays
• Personal profile complete with listening history (here’s mine). Widgets can be added, subtracted and moved all around.
• Built-in scrobbling to Last.fm that works with both on-demand and radio settings
• Easy, less-spammy integration with Facebook and Twitter.
• Create instant, on-the-fly playlists with your favorite songs.

Cons

• Library of tracks is significantly smaller than Rhapsody’s.
• Radio feature doesn’t build “endless” playlists. After 10-15 songs the mix starts to repeat. This is a big negative for me, since I prefer an endless stream of new music that doesn’t require me to intervene. I have noticed that the number of songs it will play before it repeats has been getting bigger. There have been big improvements in the last month.
• No iPhone app (but one is coming).
• No RSS feeds for your listening history, but scrobbling everything to Last.fm means this is a minimum concern.
• No way to sync or stream your own music library.
• A lot of extra features related to its blog network I’ve got no interest in using.

Audiobox.fm and MP3 Tunes.com

One thing missing from both Rhapsody and Mog.com is a way to sync your local music collection to the cloud. I’ve just started evaluating Audiobox.fm and MP3tunes.com as a way to fill this gap. Both services allow you to sync your library from computers and mobile devices. From my early tinkering, here’s where they stand:

Final words

It’s possible that Apple will transform Lala into something even better. In that case, I might not need a substitute. But Lala’s biggest draw was a premium product at a super-low price, and Apple’s history is mostly one of providing a premium product at a high price. Plus, I agree it seems unlikely they’d want to cannibalize their MP3 sales. But we can always hope. As someone who listens almost exclusively to music over the desktop, it’s my hope that I can get everything Lala had and more (e.g., radio + on-demand, mobile, social integration, music discovery). Eventually, I know, the market will meet that high threshold. Because it will have to.

Until then, I’ll be looking around and keeping you updated.