TechPulse 360

When Lala.com relaunched last October after 2 failed attempts to make a dent in the music business – first as a CD swapping broker, then with a music streaming service – I doubted it could reinvent itself a third time into something meaningful.

But after meeting with co-founder Anselm Baird-Smith and Geoff Ralston (the CEO), and trying out the service, I was sold.

In a nutshell, Lala makes it so easy to listen, share and buy – you get 50 songs for free when you sign up – music online.

Third time’s the charm?

The Palo Alto, Calif.-startup latest service combines a user-friendly browser-based music manager similar to iTunes or WinAmp for listening/managing your music, a “music locker” a-la MP3.com and a music store – rivaling iTunes or Amazon MP3 – plus some additional social media features, like the ability to make recommendations or sharing your music with friends, using social networks (Facebook or MySpace) or even Twitter.

Once your music is on Lala’s music locker, you can listen to it for free from anywhere in the U.S.; a restriction courtesy of the music labels’ stringent distribution rights.

Lala also provides Music Mover, a client software for Mac and Windows, that scans your computer for music and uploads it seamlessly on your online locker. However, if a song is already in Lala’s collection – of over 6 millions songs – then its instantly added to your private collection on Lala.

It took me about 30-minutes to build a private collection on Lala of several hundred songs. And I didn’t pay a penny yet!

Try before you buy!

You can also add new music to your locker, either by purchasing a 10 cents “Web song” – for streaming only – or the actual DRM-free MP3 file for 79 cents.

Furthermore, Lala also has a “try before you buy” offer that allows you to listen to the entire length of any of its 6 million songs for free.

Lala is not ad-supported and makes money in selling music. “Ad supported music will go away,” says Ralston

My only complaint for Lala is that it requires an Internet connection to access the content of the music locker, limiting its use to a tethered PC.

But that may not be a problem for very long, once those Web-enabled consumer electronics devices unveiled at last weeks CES (TVs, Blu-Ray players, Cisco’s music streaming…) start showing up in retailers’ shelves.