Lala-ing To My Tunes

One of my favorite presents to receive is an iTunes gift card. I just like to go on iTunes and buy me some music. Is that a bad thing? Well, it can be if the things I want are costly.

In general, I'm picky when it comes to songs I want to buy. Some groups I will buy their entire CD no matter what. I have all of the CDs for Rammstein, for instance, and I bought their latest CD - Liebe ist fur alle da - with only having heard one song. And the CD is pretty good, at least to me it is.

I recently came across a new music site, though, that might make me even more pickier with how to spend my money. Lala.com is like a Web-based version of iTunes. Their collection of music is vast - not as vast as iTunes', but pretty extensive. It's actually pretty easy to use. You sign up and you get 25 credits off the bat. For one credit, you add a song to your collection. Each credit costs 10 cents, so once you run out of the free credits you just need to replenish your account and you can start adding songs once more.

You can also buy the MP3s of songs or CDs, and many of them are 89 cents. If you add a song to your collection and want to buy it afterward, it costs 79 cents to buy.

Now, before I continue I want to disclose to you that I have no affiliation to Lala.com nor any other company, nor do I typically give free advertising to anyone but the Disneyland Resort. I just figure that it's a great thing that many people may not know about.

A lot of times, I'll listen to music while I write or blog or cook or whatever. And a lot of times I'm listening on my laptop. I can listen to the songs on Lala as long as I have an internet connection, which these days is pretty much anywhere.

I think I read somewhere that there might be some sort of Lala app for the iPhone but since I don't have an iPhone I'm not going to invest too much time into pursuing that bit of info (sorry!). There's actually some buzz about this whole Lala/iTunes deal as Apple snatched up Lala recently, just two months ago. Apparently either Apple is going to jazz up Lala and incorporate its benefits into iTunes or their iPhone or they are going to choke Lala's neck until Lala doesn't breathe anymore.

Whatever the case, the site is a pretty cool idea. There are songs I'd like to listen to whenever I wanted to - well, whenever I'm online and want to, anyway - but I don't want to pay 99 cents for (or 1.29 for). But I'd pay a dime for them.

And there are some songs that are way cheaper on Lala than on iTunes. Case in point: I like the Smashing Pumpkins, and a long time ago I taped some of their B sides off some radio show (back in the cassette tape days). There were about four or five songs that I really, really liked, but I lost track of the tape once I no longer had a tape player and eventually forgot about the songs altogether. But recently I was on Lala trying to figure out how to spend my credits when I did a search for the Pumpkins and came across their B sides CD, and all those songs were there. I checked on iTunes and each song is 1.29 but each song is only 89 cents on Lala - 79 now since I added them to my collection.

Wanna see my collection? I'll show you mine if you show me yours.

I can explain nos. 3 and 22

This is my playlist and it shows how many times I've listened to each song. Some of these songs I went ahead and bought on iTunes since I wanted to listen to them on my iPod/BlackBerry. I want to buy the Pumpkins songs I have on here and probably will once I get around to it. Just haven't gotten around to it.

Anyway, just wanted to spread the word. I have nothing invested in this other than it's a cool way to listen to music and maybe save a few cents here and there.